Corona | Coming Attractions

www.rendezvouswithrama.com was snagged by Revelations Entertainment back in June of this year. It just goes to a placeholder page right now, in case you were thinking of clicking, but hey, it's the thought that counts.

Wow. It just might come to pass. Intel and Revelations have formed an alliance not only having to do with this project, but also, as Variety puts it, "...lead to the formation of a subsidiary company devoted to the evolving field of digital filmmaking, which Intel, [Morgan] Freeman and [Freeman's partner Lori] McCreary say is where desktop publishing was a decade ago." Revelations is hoping that Rama will follow Panic Room on Fincher's dance card.

Poking around the Revelations Entertainment website, another of our readers stumbled across another interesting piece of information about this project. While reading the biography for Revelations Entertainment CEO Lori McCreary, scooper Phil Jones came across this nugget of discovery tucked in the prose: French artist Moebius will provide conceptual designs for the film.

Don't believe us? Here's the text, taken from the website in question: "Freeman will star, internationally renowned illustrator, Moebius, will design and acclaimed director, David Fincher (Seven, The Game, Fight Club), will take the helm." Cool, huh?

Once again one of our readers has fit another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is this film's production, and in the process of doing so uncovered a new writer working on the Rama film. Here's the e-mail that started it all:

"Thanks for the comprehensive & informative site. I was trawling the net looking for information on the novel Rendezvous with Rama and I stumbled across the site for Revelation Films, Morgan Freeman's production company. They have a page on the Rama film at:

www.revenet.com/film/rama.html

"According to this page Freeman is set to star and Fincher to direct as you've already reported on your RWR page. However, the writer listed is not Andrew Kevin Walker but Scott Brick, who I've never heard of and doesn't appear to have an IMDB entry. Note the page's blurb about the film speaks almost like the film has already been made!

"There's also a interesting morsel of info over in their interactive media section:

www.revenet.com/interactive/rama.html

'Having aquired the rights to Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi classic, we will be creating the feature film, a T.V. program and on line products over the next three years. We will be putting together On-Line symposiums with panels of futurists and sci-fi experts to chat on-line over the next six months.'

"Cool. They also have a tantalizingly named 'screening room' but there's nothing there yet."

While screenwriter Scott Brick doesn't have an entry in the Internet Movie Database yet, we were able to learn that he's worked as a journalist for Wizard magazine in the past. Now all we need to find out is if Brick performed a page one rewrite of the material, or if he rewrote Walker's draft.

I met Joe Black! And guess what he said: "Fincher is possibly scheduled to direct The Black Dahlia before Rama. Fincher is currently completing his duties with Fight Club, which looks very good." That's it? No cosmic truths? No tips on how to get Forlani's phone number? Oh, well.

Navasota did some snooping around and here's what he came up with. There are spoilers in the last sentence, so swipe if you wanna.

With the advent of PolyGram's new domestic distribution arm (The Game being the line's first release), PolyGram Films will indeed release this film when its release date comes around. The scooper also confirms that David Fincher is attached to direct the picture; and actually, Morgan Freeman (who owns the film rights to the book) took the project to Fincher with the actor attached to it already. Then Fincher brought the project to Propaganda Films (owned by PolyGram) under the conditions of his overall deal with Propaganda (Fincher has a three-picture deal with Propaganda.) And finally, scribe Andrew Kevin Walker (who wrote Seven and did final production polishes for Fincher's The Game) is penning the adaptation. Walker has been doing extensive research for the past six months and will hand in his take of the novel sometime this month.

Everything sounds first-rate with this project so far, and the fans of the Rama book here at CA anxiously await an official announcement in the (hopefully) near future.

Fincher is presently considering tackling this film. Freeman and the production company want to release the film on New Years Eve, 1999 - a fitting evening to speculate about Mankind's first encounter with aliens. We heard from good authority that the producers are really striving to create a film pleasing for hard science fiction fans. To create a plausible vision of Clarke's future world, the production wants to film all the Rama sets as virtual sets and then place the actors in afterwards. This would allow the actors to actually see what the Raman vessel looks like, and act off of it - which would practically be the first time such an effort has been made. Previously, actors have been required to react to "invisible" special effects that are later inserted in the post-production phase.

According to this reader, the French film magazine Premiere had a small interview with Morgan Freeman. Freeman was quoted as saying he has formed his own production company and that his choice for director on this movie would be David Fincher (Seven).

The budget for this picture may be in the process of being planned, and it could top $100 million. A rumor forwarded by this scooper names Terry Gilliam as a possible director.

Project announcement is sent by this scooper, who tells us that Morgan Freeman is attached to the project. Polygram Films may be the picture's distributor, as they have backed Propaganda films in the past.