All-star genre cast in Sci-Fi re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland

[august]

From the people (network Sci-Fi, producers Robert Halmi Sr. and Jr., and writer/director Nick Willing) who gave us new versions of Tn Man and Flash Gordon - a re-imagined Alice in Wonderland in a fantasy world setting. Shooting just began in Vancouver, and it will air in December sometime.

The movie centers on Alice Hamilton, a fiercely independent twentysomething who suddenly finds herself on the other side of a looking glass. She is a stranger in an outlandish city of twisted towers and casinos built out of playing cards, all under the rule of a deliciously devilish Queen who's not very happy about Alice's arrival.

Alice: Caterina Scorsone (dollsome 27-yr.-old Toronto native and star of 1-800-Missing series)



Queen of Hearts : Kathy Bates (Misery)
Dodo: Tim Curry (Rocky Horror, Legend)
King of Hearts: Colm Meany (Deep Space Nine)
Jack of Hearts: Philip Winchester (Crusoe, Thunderbirds)
White Kinght: Matt Frewer (Max Headroom, Eureka)
Hatter: Andrew Lee Potts (Primeval)
9 of Clubs: Alessandro Juliani (BSG)


Details at Sci-Fi Wire.

[Zagor]

Sounds interesting. I thought Tin Man was pretty good so high hopes for this.

[kszonew]

Originally Posted by august

From Hatter: Andrew Lee Potts (Primeval)
9 of Clubs: Alessandro Juliani (BSG)

Since Potts is an English actor I wonder if he's relocated to Canada just for the shoot, for good or if he's over in the Americas to work on the apparent American version of Primeval or the movie and is taking other available work. Interesting find. Though it's likley nothing but a British actor coming over to do a role.

Some trivia on Juliani. He was also recurring on Smallville last year as the Justice League's personal doctor called Emil Hamilton.

[august]

He did a movie in Canada last year called Heart of a Dragon, so he has a work permit, and my guess is that as soon as Sci-Fi made the deal to rerun Primeval, they began looking for an excuse to do anything they could with some of its cast (just as they do with anyone else w/ even the remotest of genre connections.) Likewise, as soon as the deal w/ Sci-Fi was done, my guess is that his agent immediately began contacting people in the US and Canada, in case there might be any good opportunities available.

[Michael]

"Tin Man" was fantastic, much better than most of the stuff you see on SciFi. But just because it was so good doesn't mean this new project will be good. It will have to earn its own accolades rather than ride the laurels of others.

I feel many people agree with me about the uneven quality of SciFi Channel's productions.

[august]

Well, and plenty of people complained about Tin Man too.

But obviously, when you have different producers, and different budgets, things will be very different. Sadly, I fear that 99% of the viewing audience thinks that if something is heavily advertised, has big-$$ visible on the screen, and some recognizable stars ("wow - that's Richard Dreyfuss! And that's Alan Cumming from X-Men!") then something must be "good," but if it's something they've never heard of, and the sfx are done on a low-budget with actors they've never heard of, then it must be "bad."

[kszonew]

Originally Posted by august

Well, and plenty of people complained about Tin Man too.

But obviously, when you have different producers, and different budgets, things will be very different. Sadly, I fear that 99% of the viewing audience thinks that if something is heavily advertised, has big-$$ visible on the screen, and some recognizable stars ("wow - that's Richard Dreyfuss! And that's Alan Cumming from X-Men!") then something must be "good," but if it's something they've never heard of, and the sfx are done on a low-budget with actors they've never heard of, then it must be "bad."

That seems to be the general consensus too much these days. Truth be told, I've seen a lot of things with unknowns that are better than things with major stars.

[august]

It's so weird - in recent years, I've watched more and more made-for-Sci-Fi movies, most of which are done on shoe-string budget of $1.5 million or less, and shot in under 3 weeks. Mainly because they try to cast as many recognizable genre "names" as they can, i.e. people who were in Star Trek, Xena, etc. And the quality is of course pretty low. But I realize that when you listen to the dialogue, and think about the actual plot... and then compare it to a $100 million genre movie, there really is no significant difference. It's just that with extra $$, you can shoot the same scene 20 times to get the perfect 2-seconds of something you want, whereas with a lower budget movie, you have to go with the first or second take, good or bad. Same with SFX... same with time to do fancy editing with hundreds of hours of extra footage that the bigger budget film can afford to shoot.