Katharine Trendacosta

French Court Rules That Luc Besson’s Lockout Ripped Off Escape From New York

Luc Besson’s Europacorp has to pay out €80,000 after a French court ruled that Lockout was pretty much of a copy of Escape From New York. There are a number of interesting things to note about this case. First of all, French copyright law is, in general, much more plaintiff friendly than America’s. Second, the…

Hack/Slash Is Going to Be a TV Series Now

The latest project moving out of movie development hell and into TV purgatory is an adaptation of the independent comic Hack/Slash, with a pilot script being written by screenwriter Skip Woods (Hitman, X-Men Origins: Wolverine). The comic, which centers on Cassie Hack and her muscle-bound partner Vlad’s murder of murderers—some of which are suspiciously familiar…

A Supernatural Force Teaches a Cruel Prince an Important Lesson

In KINGKILLS, a spoiled and destructive prince takes his cruel ways out of the palace and into nature, where a spirit of the forest turns the tables on him. It’s a simple little short, but the animation is simply gorgeous. The original art and visual development comes from Anastasia Kim and the direction and visual…

Grab a drink and sit by me: A Disney’s Descendants sequel is officially in the works. And thankfully(?) the writers of the first one will back. [Deadline]

When Is It Time to Let Your Main Characters Go?

Long-running series have an aversion to change. Which makes sense, since it’s hard to ditch the actors and plots that were working. But it is important to see the signs that they aren’t working anymore. There are times when a character’s arc has come to an end. They’ve served their plot purpose and now it’s…

That “Marvel Taking Back Fantastic Four” Rumor Is False [UPDATED]

You’re going to need a giant salt lick for this one, but it’s not totally out of line with Marvel’s history: there’s a rumor that Fox exchanged the movie rights to Fantastic Four for the two X-Men series that were announced yesterday. Update: We’re hearing from multiple credible sources that this is not true. Den…

io9 Costume Show Week 2: Bring Out Your Dead!

We’ve got Starfleet, Star-Lord, and Star Wars! Plus costume stars of all stripes on io9’s Halloween Costume Show! Come on in and add to the madness. Whether they’re still in progress or you’ve had the finishing touches ready since November 1st of last year, post pictures of your Halloween costumes (please post pictures of yourself…

A Satellite Took an Image That Looks Like a Van Gogh

This image of the Azore islands, taken by Sentinel-1A, was processed to make the water appear in blues and the land in brown and greens. The effect turns the image into something like a van Gogh painting. Image credit: Copernicus Sentinel data (2015)/ESA Contact the author at [email protected].

Why Twitter Can and Will Make GIFs Disappear

You may have heard that Deadspin’s GIFs disappeared from Twitter. And then Deadspin disappeared from Twitter. And then Deadspin reappeared on Twitter. It all seems completely ridiculous, except all of it was a pretty standard blunt-force application of copyright law on the internet. The only unusual part was that Deadspin was able to fight back.…

Last Night, Someone on iZombie Had the Greatest Alibi Ever

Look, a lot of important things happened on “Zombie Bro,” but the best part of the episode was the truly epic alibi for murder one couple had. I love it and this show. Everyone should be watching iZombie. Spoilers ahead. At some point, this show is going to run out of stereotypes for Liv to…

Start Your Day With This Lovely, Atmospheric Tribute to The Dark Forest

W A T E R D R O P is a short by Ren Wang that is based on Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest. The short itself is a take on broadcasts into space that is more abstract than most other takes on the issue, but it is beautiful, unsettling and definitely worth the watch.…

Minority Report Introduces Dash to Love, Finally Delivers a Decent Episode

In “Fredi,” we got a very predictable mystery and some time with Dash. It was a totally capable episode almost too boring to recap. Spoilers… Dash and Vega are officially partners, with Wilmer Valderrama stopping by just long enough to smarm at the two. Dash has a vision of a girl with a distinctive bracelet,…

David Duchovny Got Us Up to Speed on the New X-Files Series

It’s been seven years since we last saw live-action Mulder and Scully, and 13 years since The X-Files was on TV. So of course the question we have to ask is what about that gap makes the new X-Files better than the old. We spoke to David Duchovny, Chris Carter, Mitch Pileggi, and Kumail Nanjiani…

Once Upon a Time Reminds Us to Never Have Any Friends or Family

Welcome back to Once Upon a Time, where having friends and family is nothing but disappointment. Thanks for the upbeat message, “Siege Perilous.” Spoilers… Last season ended with Emma becoming the Dark One and Rumple in a coma. This season began by tossing Emma—and her annoying Storybrooke rescue troupe—to Camelot. Now, everyone’s back and six…

The First Three Minutes of Shadowhunters Are All Sexy Supernatural Stalking

ABC Family has released a sneak peek at Shadowhunters, the TV adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments, which is taking the place of the film series that was already in development. Even from just this sneak peek, you can see that Shadowhunters is starting with City of Bones, ignoring the movie adaptation which came…

We Saw the First Episode of Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Now We Want More

Netflix and Marvel’s Jessica Jones showed its first episode at a packed New York Comic Con house, and it delivered so much. Here are our spoiler-free first impressions. It looks so good. It’s a shallow point, but a really important one. Jessica Jones may be one of the first ever comic book shows to get…

We Saw the First New X-Files Episode, And It Feels Like Home

The first episode of the revived X-Files was shown to packed house at New York Comic Con. Here are our spoiler-free first impressions. If there was one really big takeaway from the first episode, it was just how much of the old show had survived. Despite everything, for better or worse, this is The X-Files,…

James Cameron’s Avatar Universe Expands Into Comics

Because three sequels filmed back to back was not enough Avatar content to sate the public’s massive demand, James Cameron has announced that there will also be a number of Avatar comics. You can see Cameron’s video below, but the part that stands out to us is the idea that the series will cover “the…

For Some Godforsaken Reason, Disney Is “Fast-Tracking” a Cruella de Vil Movie

It’s a day ending in ‘y,’ so Disney has another live-action, villain-focused adaptation of one of their classic animated films in the works. This one coming from the screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who wrote the 50 Shades of Grey script. Excuse me while I weep for a bit. All the way back in April of this…

In This Brand New Librarians Clip, Atlantis Once Again Rears Its Ugly Head

If there is one thing I have learned from fiction, it’s that finding the lost city of Atlantis is never a good thing. And it looks like the librarians are going to discover that for themselves when season 2 of The Librarians returns to TNT. This exclusive clip reminds us how much we missed this…