Further to my post from a few months ago ('Filming the un-filmable'), it has emerged since then that the pre-production for Guillermo Del Toro's film adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's 'At The Mountains of Madness' has got the green light from Universal.

The film is to be produced by the legendary James Cameron and the script has been written by both Del Toro and Matthew Robbins. Speculation is already rampent about who will be starring in the film. Names such as Ron Perlman, Tom Cruise and James McAvoy have already been thrown around in connection to the project.

According to shocktillyoudrop.com Del Torro told The New York Times' 'Times Talks' Series:

"We've been designing for the last 3-weeks. It's being produced by James Cameron, who's been a friend for 20-years," del Toro said, "we have avoided working together until the time came for the right project. Obviously, the difference between the novella and the movie is that Lovecraft had a gift for making everything specifically ambiguous. He would say 'the leering face loaded with madness,’ or 'the evil perverse entity of unnamable'… everything was unnamable, indescribable. When you're reading you go,'Whoa!' your brain fills those spaces. For every creature, everyone has a secret mental image of what those creatures look like. It's going to be impossible to please everyone."

James Cameron has told Wired that the film could be on the same scale as something like Aliens and gives his thoughts on Del Toro as a director:

"Guillermo brings an eye for design that is so original and so quirky and so steeped in the lore of movie design and horror design, but always fresh and unexpected. Frankly, I just want to see what he comes up with and I want to enable the nuts and bolts of the production so he doesn’t have to worry about that. I want to help him how to work in 3-D."

Lovecraft fans as well as general horror movie fans must be salivating at the prospect of this film. So far all the rumblings from those putting it have been very positive from the hype surrounding the design to the calibre of actors whose names are being thrown around.

At the same time there is even more to celebrate as James Cameron has announced his return to the seminal Alien franchise with the pre-production on the 5th installment of the series that will infact be a prequal to the first film.

Personally, I can't wait for 'Alien 5' and 'At The Mountains of Madness' to crawl onto the silver screen and relieve me of my speculation.

This article on Wired has got me thinking a little about the declining newspaper circulation in the UK. Essentially Japan has the highest newspaper circulation in the world, or close to it considering the size of the country. I'm sure you don't need to be told that the Japanese are also mad about their comics. They already have Adult, Horror, Sci-Fi, Childrens, and Fantasy comics published daily in print and online... so why not current affairs? Manga No Shimbun (Manga Newspaper), is an online newspaper that presents it's stories in a variety of manga styles to suit the tone of the story (serious stories get the realistic look and lighter news gets a more cutesy or stylized treatment etc.).

The challenge for the artists must be huge. I know that Japenese society is built on a very industrious foundation, but carpal tunnel syndrome must be rife in its comics and animation industry. Not to mention how one would begin to condense a major tragic event into a panel of drawings and speech bubbles.

The fact that the newspaper also has mobile phone/iphone applications to let you view the daily editions is a great way of getting the news to an ever increasingly digitized populous. Although many papers are accessible via the web and many have iphone apps the combination of a pictorial based product is an intriguing thought. Would this work in the west – I know there is a strong following of comics and Japanese culture in Europe and the USA, so an international division may not be a bad idea.

I know there is the temptation to say “But it's dumbing down/It's killing the language!” but it isn't is it? We already have 60 second TV and radio news giving us the day's bulletins in quick digestible bites, so I can't see how this would be much different. Besides, think of the acclaimed writers who are literary geniuses that work in comic books – Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore. If you base the product in good journalistic practice and accompany it with engaging visuals then maybe people will seek out more information, and then where would they go? Well it would have to be to a print or digital newspaper.

If it turns people back on to current affairs, that can only be a good thing right?

Wired article - Have a look at their translated comic pages in the article by by moving you mouse over the pictures.

http://www.newsmanga.com
Translated by Google