MEDIA > NEWS ARCHIVE > 2002

December 30, 2002:
BBC Will Air Taken
The BBC has won the bidding rights to show Taken, the SCI FI Channel's upcoming original miniseries, in the United Kingdom, the Reuters news service reported. The BBC paid $3 million to secure the 20-hour epic miniseries, which charts the lives of three families against the backdrop of 50 years of UFO history, the wire service reported. Steven Spielberg is the executive producer. "I am pleased that the BBC, which has long been a part of my life, has expanded their relationship with its commitment to Taken," Spielberg said in a statement, the wire service reported. Taken premieres on SCI FI on Dec. 2. It airs on BBC 2 in January 2003, Reuters reported.

December 28, 2002:
The Cat In The Hat Official Website
The Cat In The Hat now have a official website!!! Click here to see it! The movie will be out just at ThanksGiving 2003.

December 20, 2002:
Taken nominated for Golden Globes
Taken was nominated for Best Miniseries or TV Movie at 60th AnnualGolden Globe Awards (which will be presented January 19, 2003 in Beverly Hills, California. Lets hope that Dakota will be there and they will win this awards.=)

December 18, 2002:
Writer 'Taken' With Success
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - While Sci Fi Channel basks in the ratings and critical success of its miniseries "Taken" -- or, more properly, "Steven Spielberg Presents Taken" -- writer Leslie Bohem is less interested in alien spaceships than with another holiday-season UFO. In other words, he's too busy playing Santa to rest on his laurels.
"I'm just too Christmas-obsessed," he says. "'Taken' is a thing of the past, now it's just all about the presents I didn't have time to get." Executive-produced and shepherded by Spielberg -- and fans of "E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" no doubt had occasional twinges of déjà vu while watching -- "Taken" followed three families whose lives intertwined with each other and the phenomenon of alien abduction from 1947 until the present.
Airing for 20 hours over 10 nights (with weekday and weekend repeats) "Taken" propelled Sci Fi into the No. 1 position in basic cable primetime -- a first for the channel -- for two weeks. "It's just something you never know about," says Bohem. "When you working on it, you can't even know if it's good, because you're so close to it. But there's no way to know if anybody's ever going to watch it. It's so utterly out of your control. So, yeah, at that level, I am surprised."
Many reviewers compared "Taken" to "Roots," with which it shares the concept of a multigenerational saga, also common to such other hit miniseries as "The Thorn Birds," "Centennial," "I, Claudius" and "The Last Don" -- or even, indeed, Sci Fi Channel's "Dune" and upcoming "Children of Dune." "Taken" followed three families: the Crawfords, who investigated aliens inside the government; the Keys, who became alien test subjects; and the Clarkes, who mingled human and alien DNA. "I think people do love a continuing story," Bohem says. "They've loved it since Charles Dickens. We knew that [it would be about families] very early on. Lots of things changed -- the way we were going to approach the story; whether we were going to start at the beginning or the middle or the end; who the families were going to be. But we always knew we wanted the generational perspective and, frankly, I knew I always wanted to do a soap opera."
That's got a pejorative thing about it, and I don't mean that at all. That's one of it strengths. To me, all that means is, it's human drama, not science fiction. I wanted the people to be as real as possible, to be ordinary people. I didn't want them to be cops or super-agents. I didn't want them to be -- in the case of the Keys family or the Clarke family -- I just wanted them to be people affected by this." "I didn't want them to be a special unit of the FBI, which was investigating extraterrestrials, for example. I thought it kind of had been done."
As "Taken" ended, the aliens took possession of the powerful hybrid child Allie (played by the astonishing Dakota Fanning), the offspring of Lisa Clarke (granddaughter of an alien, played by "Without a Trace" and "Dark Skies" star Eric Close) and abductee Charlie Keys (Adam Kaufman, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" ). At the same time, the scheming, amoral Mary Crawford (Heather Donahue, "The Blair Witch Project" ), granddaughter of original UFO investigator Owen Crawford (Joel Gretsch), appeared headed to prison. "Yeah," Bohem says, "she'll probably break out."
"Taken" will likely be repeated in weekly installments in the 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2003, but as to a sequel, Bohem says, "There can't help be talk of stuff like that when a show does well. Certainly, I would like to be involved with it if I thought it could be every bit as good. I would love to know more about the story. I would love to find out what happens next." Because, of course, Allie is not dead, and neither are her parents. "What if they have more kids?" Bohem says. "That's an interesting idea."

December 05, 2002:
Viewers Take to Spielberg Alien Series
attracted more than 6 million viewers and has already sparked talk of a follow-up series. "We're ecstatic about the numbers," Darryl Frank, co-head of DreamWorks TV, which produced the show for Sci-Fi, tells Variety. The program, which cost $40 million to produce, centers on a young girl, Allie (played by 8-year-old Dakota Fanning), and follows the stories of three families over 50 years of alien abductions. Also in the cast are Matt Frewer, best-known for playing Max Headroom, and Heather Donahue, who starred in "The Blair Witch Project." The first 10 hours of "Taken" conclude Friday, but Sci-Fi will repeat them twice on the weekend. The cable channel will rerun the show all next week, with the final two hours airing Dec. 13. All 20 hours will be aired consecutively over the Dec. 14-15 weekend in a blowout marathon. Explaining the show's popularity, Frank tells Variety: "It delivers a mix of sci-fi special effects with strong characters and family drama."

December 03, 2002:
The Cat In The Hat Review
A bored little boy and girl (Fanning) are visited on a rainy day, while their mother is away, by a Cat in a Hat (Myers), along with Thing #1 and Thing #2, who quickly proceed to make a mess of the house. At least, that's what's in the book, which is quite thin at a mere 220 words. Talking to Film Unlimited, Tim Allen said that they may stretch out the story by going with a "werecat" concept, in which a man becomes a cat over the course of his visit with the kids.

November 22, 2002:
Dakota Fanning Joins 'Man on Fire'
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dakota Fanning has closed a deal to star opposite "Training Day" Oscar winner Denzel Washington in the Tony Scott-directed "Man on Fire". Based on the A.J. Quinnell novel -- first published in hardcover in 1980 -- and adapted by Brian Helgeland, "Fire" centers on an American ex-soldier (Washington) living out his days in Naples, Italy. He reluctantly agrees to protect a child, Pinta Balletto (Fanning), whose parents are threatened by a rash of kidnappings. Unexpectedly, the caustic loner befriends the girl only to see his life take another turn when she is kidnapped and later murdered. Shooting is due to begin in February.

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