I don’t usually watch 60 Minutes because I don’t have grey pubes, but yesterday they did a profile on JC, aka Jesus Cameron, director of Avatar and creator of the universe amen. It’s mostly the same stuff you’ve already heard in his Playboy interview, his New Yorker profile, his letter to Penthouse forum, etc., but there was one tidbit that was new to me:
“The head of Orion, who were gonna release Terminator, called me up and said, ‘Are you sitting down? I have cast this movie. I was at a party, and it’s OJ Simpson for the Terminator.’
And I said ‘This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.’
And I didn’t know OJ Simpson, I had nothing against him personally, and I didn’t know he was gonna go murder his wife and become the real Terminator…”
The segment does a pretty good job of capturing Cameron in a nutshell: enough of a megalomaniacal Napoleon to wear a hat that says HMFIC (Head MotherF-cker In Charge) but refreshing in that he’s the rare Hollywood personality that seems very intelligent and has the balls to casually call OJ a murderer in an interview. In related news, Brett Ratner has a hat that says “Big Cheese” because he loves nachos.
(My mistake, this is actually a Birdemic, not a Robopocalypse, I must’ve gotten the slides mixed up.)
Dreamworks today bought the rights to an unpublished novel called Robopocalypse, which of course is the erotic story of the first lesbian to play in the WNBA.
The angry-robots story line has played out in movies such as the “Terminator” series, “I, Robot” and the two “Transformers” films [wrong, though we would've accepted "The Matrix." -Ed.]
But Daniel H. Wilson, an actual Ph.D. in robotics, has grounded his tale with a heavy degree of authenticity derived from real robot technology.
“Daniel H. Wilson’s cautionary tale of man versus machine grabbed us from the very beginning,” said Dreamworks’ Mark Sourian. “Wilson’s background in robotics and artificial intelligence grounds his story with a frightening level of realism.”
Wilson added: “Writing this novel is an incredible thrill, after spending years studying and thinking about robotics. My hope is that the story we tell will make the robots of the future proud of us humans.” [THR]
Let’s see, so you took the premise of a bunch of other science fiction movies and added more realism and a literal title? Well, done, man, that’s great. (*pats Wilson on the back while secretly taping “kick me i’m a huge dork” sign to it*) Wilson is also known for writing such previous titles as (and I’m not making any of these up): - How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion, Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown, - How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Aliens, Ninjas, and Zombies and - The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame: Muwahahaha! So congrats to Daniel Wilson, or, as he’s known to friends, “I thought I told you to stop calling here.”
As happens surprisingly often, Joss Whedon did something today, and the internet sh-t its collective pants. As I first reported last month, Halcyon is auctioning off the rights to the Terminator franchise later this month. On his blog, Joss Whedon, the man behind Dollhouse and Serenity and Buffy and Firefly, made an allegedly comedic pitch for it. Here’s the letter, since everyone seems to care. Go ahead and add this to the growing list of things Joss Whedon did that I didn’t really understand.
An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners. From a Very Important Hollywood Mogul
Dear Sirs/Ma’ams,
I am Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Titan A.E., Parenthood (not the movie) (or the new series) (or the one where ‘hood’ was capitalized ’cause it was a pun), and myriad other legendary tales. I have heard through the ‘grapevine’ that the Terminator franchise is for sale, and I am prepared to make a pre-emptive bid RIGHT NOW to wrap this dealio up. This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.
After already changing hands a bunch of times, the rights to the Terminator franchise were bought by Halcyon (Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek) in 2007 for $25 million. They subsequently released Terminator Salvation this year, but despite the film earning $371 million worldwide, Halcyon is in bankruptcy court owing creditors between $4 and $32 million. Since the rights to the Terminator franchise are their only asset, they’re selling them, and they want $60 million.
“We’re going to be contacting a variety of studios and independent companies,” said Kevin Shultz, senior managing director at FTI. “We think the values are considerably in excess of the purchase price.”
In a previous bankruptcy court filing, Anderson claimed that the Terminator rights are now worth more than $60 million, more than double what he and Kubicek paid. Shultz said his firm will conduct its own analysis. Such valuations, which are based on forthcoming cash flow from “Salvation,” which has yet to be released on DVD, as well as potential further sequels, can vary widely because the performance of future films is so difficult to predict. [LA Times]
If someone pays $60 million for the rights — which they probably won’t — but if they pay anywhere near that, it’s hard to imagine they’d spend that much unless they were planning to make another Terminator movie. (Then again, it’s hard to imagine someone paying $25 million for the rights, making a movie that earns almost $400 million, and still ending up bankrupt, but that’s another story). I can only hope Fox buys the rights and hires Randi Mayem Singer to write the script. In a world, where John Connor is raised by an African-American family, one straitlaced robot will learn how to loosen up, and one community will be turned upside down. Starring Sinbad, Duane the Rock Johnson, and Channing Tatum. Terminator 5: I’ll be Black. Opens Judgement Day, August 29th 2011.
Terrifying robot video after the jump
Hey, guess which country is building terrifying humanoid robots!
The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it’s slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship. The team is trying to teach the pint-sized android to think like a baby who evaluates its mother’s countless facial expressions and “clusters” them into basic categories, such as happiness and sadness.
Professor Minoru Asada, also a member of the Japanese Society of Baby Science [Editor's Note: !!!!!], said the CB2 has taught itself how to walk with the aid of a human and can now move its body through a room quite smoothly, using 51 “muscles” driven by air pressure.
In coming decades, Asada expects science will come up with a “robo species” that has learning abilities somewhere between those of a human and other primate species such as the chimpanzee [hopefully without the chimp-like propensity to rip off your face and genitals].
Thousands of humanoids could be working alongside humans in a decade or so, if that is what society wants, said Fumio Miyazaki, engineering science professor at the Toyonaka Campus of Osaka University. “Robots have hearts,” said Kokoro planning department manager Yuko Yokota. “They don’t look human unless we put souls in them. When manufacturing a robot, there comes a moment when light flickers in its eyes. That’s when we know our work is done.”
Public opinion in Japan may be more open to robots than in the West, where dark science fiction visions from movies such as “Bladerunner” and “Terminator” have conjured images of robo-soldiers taking over the world. “Japanese people have a friendly image towards robots,” said Toshiba’s Yoshimi.
Asada said Japan’s indigenous animistic belief system may also have readied people to accept human-like robots with minds of their own. “Everything has a mind — the mind of the lamp, the mind of the chair, the soul of the desk,” he said, pointing at objects in his office. Therefore the machines should have their mind too. If we proceed in this study, machines may have something like a human mind or ‘robo-mind’,” he said. [Breitbart]
Say for the sake of argument I had them build me a beautiful sex-bot with the mind of a chimp and the lithe, nubile exoskeleton of a 15-year-old. Theoretically, would that be wrong? I mean, the heart wants what it wants, and what it wants is a monkey-brained rape machine.
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