Needcoffee.com
Needcoffee.com
PLEASE NOTE: “As an Amazon Associate, [Need Coffee] earns from qualifying purchases." You know we make money from Amazon links,
and I know you know this, but they make us say it anyway. More info, click here.

Stuff You Need to Know

Stuff: Beatles to Tempt Me Into Finally Buying a Gaming System

Widge
November 3, 2008
7 min read
The Beatles

Because some people just want to read a single post with all their pop culture snippets in it, instead of following an entire website about it. Essentially: this is pop culture news for people with lives. Enjoy.

  • The Beatles‘ Apple Corps have signed a deal with MTV and Harmonix to bring about some form of Rock Band game that will feature the Beatles’ music. This will hit next year and comes with the full blessing of Paul, Ringo, along with Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. Giles Martin, who co-produced Love–the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil pairing–is going to be music producer on this. The press release I read doesn’t have the official title of the game, although they’d be nuts not to call it Rock Band: The Beatles Edition or something. I will give a dollar to the first team who can do “Revolution 9” on the hardest level and give me photographic evidence of that fact.

    • [ad#rightpost]

  • Apparently the Addams Family musical reading that we told you about before went well–it’s opening in Chicago this time next year and will hit Broadway in the spring of 2010. No cast is attached yet. Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice of Jersey Boys wrote the book and Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party) scored the thing. According to the article, the musical “draws from the original Charles Addams cartoons rather than subsequent feature and TV adaptations.” The article also mentions a musical called Bruce Lee: Journey to the West? Is that what I think it is?

  • Atari has picked up the rights to the new Riddick video game as well as Ghostbusters. This after Activision Blizzard left them hanging. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault of Dark Athena is out this coming spring and Atari has licensed the property from Universal so that, as a game at least, the franchise can continue. This after it was soundly executed round back of the woodshed as a movie franchise by Chronicles. Ghostbusters–word is that it will be out next summer for the film’s 25th anniversary with more games in that franchise to continue if it sells well. I don’t see how it can’t, frankly, except that it apparently accepts the fact that there was a second Ghostbusters movie–and in doing so is the only thing on the planet that does. Another game apparently twisting in the wind is Brutal Legend, a “heavy metal music action game,” has the lead character voiced by Jack Black. Source: Variety.

  • The previously mentioned Book of Eli might get Gary Oldman on board–he’s in talks to join Denzel in the project. This article gives us a bit more on the story, which “centers on a lone hero named Eli (Washington) who must fight his way across the wasteland of a near-future America to protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving the future of humanity. Oldman will play Carnegie, the despot of a small makeshift town deficient of standard necessities, services, and most noticeably, laws. Carnegie is determined to take possession of the book Eli is guarding.” If the book turns out to be either the Vincent Price cookbook or Goodnight Moon then that would rock balls.

  • Boondock Saints 2? Apparently so. Director/scribe of the original, Troy Duffy, has kicked off production on the sequel in Toronto. Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connolly have all returned. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • Eight new Agatha Christie films are coming from ITV, four with David Suchet returning as Poirot and four with Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. Murder on the Orient Express will be remade as well. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • Cougar Town is a new sitcom in the works from Scrubs papa Bill Lawrence and star Courtney Cox, who worked together as scribe and actress on the first season of Friends, apparently. It’s about a 40-year-old mom who finds herself single. It sounds like the pilot is being scribed as we speak. Source: Variety.

  • In the “Nice Work If You Can Get It” department, Electronic Arts has a game that’s not even been announced yet and still four studios are fighting for the rights. It was five, but Warner Brothers dropped out. Game is expected to be a modern version of Dante’s Inferno. (Someone please check on Dindrane.) Another game being worked over to be made into a film (that we haven’t previously mentioned already) is The Sims at Fox. How you turn The Sims into a film is going to be amusing, since you’ll essentially be taking time out from your ordinary life to watch a movie based on a game that is based on ordinary life. Have we gone too meta yet? Probably not. Source: Variety.

  • J. Michael Straczynski is scribing the Forbidden Planet remake. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • In a move that will probably make lots of people happy, Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb, co-executive producers on Heroes have gotten fired. Source: Variety.

  • Mike Nichols in on board to helm a remake of High and Low, the Kurosawa film, for Miramax. David Mamet has scribed. Other Kurosawa remakes in the works are Ikiru by Steven Spielberg at DreamWorks (maybe directing it or just producing) and the Weinsteins want another Seven Samurai. Also mentioned in the article is the fact that Wes Anderson‘s next film, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, is animated and has voices by Meryl Streep and George Clooney. Sadly it was adapted by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, who brought Life Aquatic to the screen. The Brothers Coen are also mentioned as working on a remake of True Grit…which would have given me some pause before I watched No Country For Old Men, but now…? Interesting.

  • King of the Hill has been cancelled. The thirteenth season will be its last. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • In the “Can’t Tell If I’m Pleased or Frightened” Department, they’re remaking The Last Dragon and Sam Jackson is to play Sho’nuff. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • The new season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has gotten moved from next week to 1Q09. This after the showrunner left and had to be replaced. Source: Variety.

  • Joaquin Phoenix has decided to quit acting and focus on music full-time. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

  • While Preacher would be best served by being adapted into an HBO or Showtime maxi-series, it’s been snagged for a film adaptation (probably, what, the third or fourth time that’s happened?) by Columbia. The only thing in its favor is that Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition) is attached to direct. If that wasn’t enough, The Boys by Garth Ennis is at Columbia too. If you thought Preacher getting made was a longshot… Source: Hollywood Reporter.
  • Samantha Who?, the actually amusing sitcom starring Christina Applegate has been picked up for a full but slightly truncated second season, i.e. seven new episodes instead of nine. Source: Variety.

  • David Lindsay-Abaire, Pulitzer prize winning playwright, has been tapped to scribe Spider-Man 4. The article confirms what was in the works previously: Raimi and Maguire are back. Dunst is not locked in yet. Lindsay-Abaire is apparently currently working on the Shrek musical and adapting the play Rabbit Hole for Nicole Kidman to star in.

  • Studs Terkel died Friday in his home. He was 96.

  • Viper Comics’ Villains, by Adam Cogan and Ryan Cody, has been picked up by Universal for mid-six figures. Friend of Needcoffee Jessie Garza at Viper will be co-producing. Congrats, guys. Source: Hollywood Reporter.

    • Do you like our Stuff? You can subscribe to just this portion of the site and get the Stuff You Need to Know by using this newsfeed. Thanks for stopping by.

    Related posts:

    Stuff You Need to Know: Hollis Needs More Friends Liverpool Hope UniversityStuff: If Paul and Ringo Aren’t Passing Out Diplomas Then Forget It Headsup: Hulk in a Box and UNCLE in a Box

    5 comments

    • Busy week, eh? In the order you posted in;

      I am, in fact, a guitar hero, and will get you the evidence you seek.
      I still wonder why Activision-Blizzard (Ack-tard? Blizzivision? Vizzard? The possibilities are endless,) let go of a game that was mostly complete and had the original cast already doing the voice acting, go. I’m glad it’s found a home with a family that loves it, but there has to be some freakish reason, right? Same with Brutal Legend.
      I will see any movie that contains even minor amounts of Gary Oldman.
      On Dante, I can’t wait to see the religious backlash. On Sims: have some comic. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/9/27/
      Heroes, yeah, I’m happy. Well, happier. Well, not as angry.

    • Nice comic. I saw an article after that one, in regards to HEROES, that referred to the split as due to “creative differences.” As I understand it from my friends who watch the show: the network probably thought the show should suck less and Alexander and Loeb disagreed.

    • The issue I have is not knowing who to blame for the suck. What if, perhaps, they were the last obstacle barring the depraved writers from completely jumping the shark? I can’t celebrate their departure until I know it was well deserved.

    • Brutal Legend (I think it has umlauts somewhere in there) is actually being developed by Double Fine, the company headed by Tim Schafer (formerly of Lucasarts Games’ defunct Department of Games That Are Actually Clever And Fun). Double Fine is, of course, the development studio that gave us that masterwork of modern gaming, Psychonauts.

      …so it has a high chance of being good, is what I’m saying.

      Also, the very day that the Beatles announcement hit, Tuffley decided that what we really needed in order to celebrate our upcoming second anniversary was a copy of RockBand 2. Coincidence? I think not.

      (Not that I’m saying it was a bad idea. I’ve already gone to Guitar Center to upgrade to shock-absorbing drumsticks. I’m just saying.)

    • Mage, I applaud your caution. You are truly a well-versed Needcoffee Irregular. “MAYBE they just DITCHED THOSE TWO to FOOL US into a FALSE SENSE OF COMPLACENCY!!!” Bravo.