Genre: Science Fiction/Drama.
Studio:
Dimension Films (U.S.); Alliance Films (Canada).
Production Company:
Alliance Communications Inc.
Project Phase: In the Can.
Who's In It:
Jennifer Jason Leigh (Allegra Geller); Jude Law (Ted Pikul); Willem Dafoe (Gas); Ian Holm; Sarah
Polley; Don McKellar; Callum Keith Rennie; Rosemary Harris; Jennifer Ehle; Rachel Weisz; Miriam Margolyse; Molly Parker.
Who's Making It:
David Cronenberg (Director, Screenwriter); Andras Hamori, Robert Lantos, David Cronenberg
(Producers); Michael MacDonald (Co-Producer); Sandra Tucker (Associate Producer); Peter
Suschitzky (Director of Photography); Ron Sanders (Editor); Carol Spier (Production Designer);
Howard Shore (Musical Score?).
Premise: In a futuristic world where interactive game designers are treated like today's sports celebrities, players compete in a virtual-reality game whose complexity borders on biological principals. And one designer has devised a game that fuses together the realms of the imagined and the real -- making it the most deadly game you'll ever experience.
Release Date: April 23, 1999.
Comments: Unknown.
Rumors: Unknown.
Scoop Feedback:
May 27, 1997... Cronenberg said that this film's characters will need as much intelligence as atheletism to survive in their virtual world. The production should cost about $40 million and debut early next year. Creature effects will be utilized throughout the film. [Project information supplied by 'Rosencrantz', Richard Slick, 'Nullifier' and Francese Guasch.]
June 3, 1997... This individual's heard Nicolas Cage may star in the film. [Filed by 'Dr. Strangelove'.]
This scooper attended a party where he chatted to Chris Walas (the fellow who designed the creature effects for Cronenberg's 1986 The Fly.) Walas confirmed that he would be providing all makeup and creature related effects for Cronenberg's new film eXistenZ. "We discussed it a bit, and he repeatedly mentioned that it is 'easily' the best thing Cronenberg has ever written." Walas was very excited to start work on the project. [Sent in by 'Moriarity'.]
September 21, 1997... Howard Shore, a regular Cronenberg collaborator, has been hired as the film's composer. [Scoop sent in by 'Brently'.]
October 1, 1997... Jennifer Jason Leigh has commited to star in the picture, but filming has been pushed back until April 1998. [Scoop reported by 'sperkins' and anonymously.]
November 22, 1997... Jude Law also will star in the picture as Ted Pikul, the young security officer who constantly protects Leigh's game designer from assassination by video game fanatics. [Sent in by 'bcassidy' and anonymously.]
May 2, 1998... Let's play catch up. Callum Keith Rennie (Due South, Hard Core Logo) and Willem Dafoe (Platoon) bring some heat to the casting ensemble, along with Atom Egoyan-alumni Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, and Don McKellar. (McKellar directed Cronenberg as a porn addict in the short film Blue -- keep that in mind next time you play 'Trivial Pursuit'). Dimension Films is handling the film's distribution in the States while Alliance takes care of Canada. Filming is taking place right now in Toronto. [Thanks to 'alkamer', 'rjslick', 'DeMzaLF', 'MrPezHead', 'JRD203', 'Flamethrower', 'alipkin', ZENtertainment, 'Drexl1', but a special gold star is awarded to Robert Lewis for the McKellar trivia question.]
May 5, 1998... A Toronto film school recently hosted an an Alliance presentation where eXistenZ teaser posters were unveiled. The scooper's favorite was a silver mirror-like poster (almost like aluminum foil, they describe it as) with an eXistenZ logo where the letter 'e' uses the icon "like for an electrical plug." The tag line on the posters read 'Plug in. Turn on.' [Scooped by 'Dead Ringer'.]
July 7, 1998... The film's official website is online, but don't expect to see much at present. You can see for yourself at www.existenz.com. [Did you know anonymous email donations are tax deductible?]
July 26, 1998... While filming continued in Ontario's Dufferin Region last month, local residents received a strange letter from the production saying they shouldn't be too worried about what they'll see in the coming nights. "Will be an interesting light show at night I hear," wrote one local to CA. "Controlled propane fires, ground and airborne flares, propane fire balls and some small explosions! Their letter to us stated that we may notice some "ambient lighting." I'm ready!!" [Anonymous, and thanks to anonymous II for the assist.]
On the hunt for anything that might illuminate the story details for this scooper they came across this blurb about the film's plot: "eXistenZ: set in a contemporary world where there are metal detectors everywhere, so all your hardware has to be made out of human flesh and bone". We agree with the scooper's assessment: it definitely sounds very Cronenberg. Also the film's website has removed the tagline "Are you game to play?". Hmm... [Info passed along by Rob.]
The organic technology plotline is confirmed in a magazine interview with eXistenZ Callum Keith Rennie. Rennie said that the film was more of a buddy film than a bizarre film, but added "It does have a gun that is made of leg bone and shoots teeth at people, so I suppose it's weird!" Uh, yeah Keith; that makes it downright weird to us. [It gives an entirely new aspect to dentistry, right 'JRD203'?]
December 15, 1998... New media consultant Bill Sweetman deserves to get a pat on the back for this: he's the fellow who purchased the domain www.existenz.com last January as a test to see if the film's distributor, Alliance, will eventually clue into the fact someone beat them to getting dibs on the name.
The thing is, Sweetman's test worked so well he fooled us all. We started getting scoops that an eXistenZ web site had gone up sometime during the spring/summer of '98. Sure enough, when we visited the site we were greeted with a teaser image and the words "Are you game to play?", which fooled us and others into thinking that was the film's tag line. Naturally we threw up a link to the 'Official Site' and left it at that.
But there's a problem: Sweetman's gag worked so well that someone within Alliance got a little upset -- well, more than a little upset. According to Sweetman Alliance sent a heavy-handed letter ordering Sweetman to cease-and-desist operating his website, claiming he was using their trademark. Sweetman countered with an offer to sell Alliance the URL for just the cost of purchasing the InterNIC domain name. That was last July; he's yet to receive a reply from someone connected to the studio or directly to the film. You can read about it in a new section Sweetman's opened on the site that details his experiment and the fallout from it at www.existenz.com/game.html. Man, and we thought we were the 'net's number one April Fools Day practictioners! [Thanks to Robin Shortt, Rob and Steve for removing that 'Kick Me' sign we were wearing on our back -- oh, so that was the reason. And Bill, you've got our respect and admiration for pulling it off! Good job!]
December 29, 1998... "Just saw the trailer for the new Cronenberg film eXistenZ. It's in front of the video release of Blade. It looks good. I don't think it's going to be a straight out action/scifi film like say Total Recall. It looks like it'll follow the lines of Scanners with some action scenes interwoven between a complex plot. There's also a few biologically nightmarish scenes as only Cronenberg can make. We see Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh connected together by some sort of umbilical cord (or maybe it's just the VR game's cord) and we see the 'shooting teeth' gun.
"Looks like icky fun. This might be Cronenberg's next mainstream hit after his remake of The Fly." [Max Renn had his TV set on.]
January 14, 1999... Bill Sweetman told us that yesterday Alliance took full ownership of the URL www.existenz.com and launched its own 'teaser' web site for the film. Hopefully this means that all has been forgotten by the Alliance lawyers and Mr. Cronenberg will see the humor of the situation. If you're reading for the first time the problems and potential lawsuit Sweetman found himself in when he bought and set up the www.existenz.com site originally and you're interested in seeing and reading what happened first hand, Sweetman's archived his former site at the URL www.ideaguy.com/existenz. [Thanks to Bill Sweetman for keeping us up-to-date.]
Offical Web Site:
Related Sites:
www.ideaguy.com/existenz -- Bill Sweetman made this site as an experiment to see just how much presense a movie's Official web site has. His experiment fooled everyone (including this site) and also irked Alliance's legal department. Visit his site and learn the details.