Giant Freakin Robot

As it turns out, you’re not the only one who is super pumped about Guillermo del Toro’s impending giant-monsters-versus-giant-robots epic, Pacific Rim. The creature feature doesn’t even stomp into theaters until next summer—July to be exact—but that’s not going to stop anyone from getting down to work on the sequel. It never hurts to be prepared, just in case.

Heat Vision reports that Legendary Pictures has already hired a writer to deliver a follow-up. They’ve handed the pen to Travis Beacham, who wrote the first treatment of Pacific Rim on spec, and has also worked on Clash of the Titans. Del Toro himself will collaborate on the script with Beacham, though at the present time there is no word on whether or not he will return to direct (yesterday he signed up to direct the haunted house story, Crimson Peak, also for Legendary).

This has to mean that the studio has high expectations for Pacific Rim. It’s common practice to start work on a sequel to a projected hit, but it is still a gamble. Honestly though, given everyone involved, and the subject matter, most of us can’t imagine a scenario where Pacific Rim is anything less than a monster hit. All of the images, the blueprints, and the viral marketing videos that have appeared over the past week or so look pretty damn incredible.

Maybe no one can hear your scream when you’re in space, but when you look at this awesome fan-made poster for Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror sci-fi classic Alien, you better get your giggling under control or it will start to annoy the people around you. Okay, you might not giggle, but this image is cool enough that you’ll want a framed print of your own hanging on your wall.

Sleep, you magnificent, time-consuming bastard. There are plenty of theories about the right amount of sleep needed to do just about anything on the planet, and most are conflicting. At least eight hours of sleep is needed for a healthy lifestyle. Sleep instead of studying the night before a test. Going for a long car ride with your family? Sleep first so that your driving isn’t impaired and your irritability is lessened. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be much conflict at all here. Sleep looks like the way to go. Laziness is next to godliness, people! You heard it here!

Now, what was the point here? Oh yeah. Sleep also makes you invincible!

Well, not exactly. But a study published in the journal Sleep shows that an extremely solid night’s sleep — 10 hours or so — is a more effective pain reducer than the narcotic codeine. Researchers from the Henry Ford Hospital and Wayne State University in Detroit studied 18 volunteers, between the ages of 21 and 35, for a four-night period. It was determined that those who slept more 10 ten hours a night could withstand the pain of holding their finger to a heat source for 25 seconds longer than those who had eight hours or fewer. That has to be one of the stranger sentences I’ve written. I’m unsure why this was the only method of pain used, but I guess insurance was involved.

The road to new Terminator movies has been a bumpy one, full of traffic jams and detours. But now, nearly 18 months after Megan Ellison dropped $20 million on the rights to the sci-fi franchise, she has tapped her brother, David Ellison, as her production partner.

This is a step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go. Justin Lin was attached to direct the fifth chapter of the humans vs. cyborgs saga, but he has since left the project to focus on Fast and/or Furious movies. Franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger was also linked to the new films, though the state of his involvement at the present time is unclear.

Right now there is no studio on board to back the new Terminator films, and there has been no forward progress on the script in god knows how long. Regardless of how things play out, the film will be a partnership between Megan’s Annapurna Pictures and David’s Skydance Productions.