'Jack the Giant Killer' Writer Tackling 'Carmen Sandiego' (Exclusive)

Darren Lemke, who worked on Shrek Forever After as well as Bryan Singer’s upcoming Jack the Giant Killer, has been tapped to pen the big-screen version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Walden Media picked up the rights to the educational computer game-turned-cartoon from Houghton Mifflin in the fall of 2011. Jennifer Lopez is one of the producers and eyeing it as a starring vehicle.

Also producing are Benny Medina and Simon Fields, Lopez’s partners at Nuyorican Productions as well as Underground’s Nick Osbourne, Trevor Engelson and Devin Andre.

The story of the geographically-inclined game centers on Carmen Sandiego, the greatest detective at the ACME agency. When she becomes the world’s greatest thief, it’s up to her former partner to follow her clues and track her down.  But when their cat and mouse game leads to a bigger mystery that implicates the agency itself, the partner questions whether Carmen is a really a thief -- or a hero. 

Walden svp development & production Evan Turner and Walden CEO Michael Bostick are overseeing the project, which Walden sees as being a cross between Thomas Crown Affair and National Treasure.

Walden is hoping to capitalize on the character’s popularity and multi-generational awareness. She was introduced in 1985 as an educational software tool, evolving into computer games and programs, winning 90 awards and now used as a teaching tool in elementary schools all over the country. The three Sandiego TV series have won a Peabody and an Emmy.

Lemke is one of the town’s go-to scribes for family films. In addition to the Giant Killer spec and Shrek, he worked on Turbo, DreamWorks Animation’s currently-in-production feature, and earlier this year tackled Goosebumps, based on the R.L. Stein books, for Columbia.

He is repped by UTA and Loeb and Loeb.

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Indian Joint Venture Viacom18 Names Sudhanshu Vats Group CEO

NEW DELHI - Viacom18 Media Private Ltd. has appointed Sudhanshu Vats, 44, as its group CEO.

Viacom18 is an equal joint venture between Viacom and leading Indian broadcasting and media group Network18. Vats fills the position vacated by outgoing Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla who resigned in November.

Reporting to the Viacom18 board, Vats will be based in Mumbai and will officially join the company in August. He will be responsible for all Viacom18 businesses, which include Hindi entertainment channel Colors, Comedy Central, MTV, VH-1, kids channels Nick and Sonic and film banner Viacom18 Motion Pictures.  

Vats is a veteran in consumer goods marketing having worked at Unilever India for almost two decades with his latest position at the company being that of vp, soaps and detergents.

“Given Sudhanshu’s rich experience, his ability to lead large businesses and his acute understanding of the Indian diaspora, he is well poised to lead Viacom18 into its next phase of growth,” said Network18 Group founder Raghav Bahl.

“With Sudhanshu on board, we’re confident that Viacom18 will continue to redefine the many spaces it operates in,” added Viacom International Media Networks president and CEO Bob Bakish.

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Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren Add Star Power as Karlovy Vary Film Festival Opens Friday

The 47th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opens on Friday with the international premiere of Lisa Barros D’Sa's and Glen Leyburn's film Good Vibrations, a biopic about Terri Hooley, a record-store owner instrumental in developing Belfast's punk-rock scene.

And like last year, a Woody Allen film will close the festival – To Rome With Love after Midnight in Paris served as the closer last year.

Overall, the festival will screen 217 films (including 34 shorts) with 22 world premieres and 744 film professionals scheduled to attend.

In addition to previously announced high-profile guests, such as Susan Sarandon and Helen Mirren, both of whom will be awarded Crystal Globe lifetime achievement awards, the festival will host up-and-coming star Kara Hayward, who plays the lead in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Thomas Bo Larsen, one of director Thomas Vinterberg's regular actors who will present Vinterberg's The Hunt, and Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, who will introduce Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D, which will be screened as part of the festival's Midnight Screenings section.

Last year, the festival decided to inject some new blood into its programming and appointed longtime staffer Karel Och as artistic director. He took over from film historian Eva Zaoralova, who, along with Jiri Bartoska, a celebrated Czech actor and current festival president, is credited with building the festival's modern reputation. The festival has turned into something of a Cannes for Eastern Europe, which nonetheless balances offerings for both film industry professionals and moviegoers.

“We strike this balance by making the film professional and viewer oriented elements of the festival 'meet' one another,” said Och. “Our aim is to 'infect' film professionals with the cinephilia virus – they often have it already, but lack time to follow it – and to expose our regular audience to interesting issues from the world of the film industry in events open to the public. The balance is of crucial importance.”

Och is particularly proud of the programming staff's accomplishments in the festival's East of the West competition this year. “This year’s East of the West has a new look – it focuses on brand new titles by first- and second-time directors, and we all are very proud of the selection,” said Och. “We believe it is a highly representative program showcasing the work of the most talented young filmmakers from [all over] Central and Eastern Europe.”

The festival was founded in 1946. The Karlovy Vary Film Festival Foundation was founded in 1993 by the Czech Ministry of Culture, the City of Karlovy Vary, and the local Grand Hotel Pupp. Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary, a joint company, has organized the festival since 1998.

The total budget for this year is 135 million CZK ($6.5 million), 70 percent of which is from corporate sponsors, such as the RWE and CEZ energy groups, Audi Unicredit Bank and others. The other 30 percent come from state and municipal funds – the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Czech state budget, the city and theregion of Karlovy Vary.

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Savannah Guthrie: 10 Things to Know About Ann Curry's Likely Replacement

She's been officially offered a promotion to principal co-host of NBC's Today -- but how much do you really know about Savannah Guthrie? Here's all the essential (OK, and some not-so-essential) information on Ann Curry's likely successor.

1. She's not named for the city in Georgia. She was actually named after her grandmother. And her middle name is Clark. (So's her grandmother's.)

2. Australia born, Arizona raised. Guthrie grew up in Tucson, Ariz., where she attended Amphitheater High School, graduating in the same class as Olympic medalist and NFL player Michael Bates.

But she was actually born in Melbourne, Australia, where her father was stationed for work. She lived there two years before the family returned to the United States. 

STORY: Ann Curry Will Remain at NBC News After 'Today' Exit 

3. Higher education. Guthrie earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Arizona in 1993, where she graduated cum laude.

Years later, in the midst of a thriving broadcast journalism career, Guthrie attended Georgetown University Law Center. She earned her Juris Doctor there in 2002, graduating magna cum laude.

Guthrie is also a teacher: She led a first-year Legal Research and Writing workshop for first-year Georgetown law students.

4. She scored highest in the Arizona bar exam. Of the 634 people who took the Arizona bar exam in July 2002, Guthrie scored the highest, according to the state Supreme Court.

After also passing the D.C. bar, she worked as a litigation associate, specializing in white-collar criminal defense at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a D.C. law firm. 

5. Broadcasting bona fides. Guthrie got her first break in broadcast journalism in 1993 with a weekend anchor gig for the ABC affiliate in Columbia, Mo. In 1995, she moved back to Tucson to work as an anchor and reporter at the NBC affiliate.

She left for Washington, D.C., in 2000, where she worked as a freelance reporter at NBC affiliate WRC-TV, covering the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the 2001 anthrax mailings.

She joined Court TV (now truTV) in 2002 while working at Akin Gump, where she worked as the national trial correspondent, covering such high-profile cases as the Michael Jackson child molestation case, the Boston clergy sex abuse scandal trial and the sentencing of Martha Stewart. 

STORY: Iraq War Veteran Launches Petition to Save Ann Curry's Job 

6. A quick rise at Today. After serving as NBC News White House correspondent from December 2008 to June 2011, reporting for NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams, Today and MSNBC (where she co-hosted The Daily Rundown for a little over a year), Guthrie was asked to join Today full time in June 2011 as co-host of the show's third hour. She also serves as the show's chief legal analyst. 

7. She plays hardball. Guthrie has said that her approach to any interview is "to try to think of the one question they would rather not be asked, just to see what they would say."  

8. She isn't immune to controversy. In a Today Show segment from August 2011, Guthrie asked a doctor guest if "it's proper to breastfeed in public." Later, she compared breastfeeding to going to the bathroom, saying, "You have to go to the bathroom but you don't do that in public, hopefully. Is there a difference?"

The comments earned an angry protest on Twitter, where outraged moms marked their outraged tweets with the hashtag #NIP (a punny acronym for "not in public").

9. She is single. Guthrie met her husband, then-BBC journalist Mark Orchard, while both covered the Jackson trial in 2005. Orchard was married at the time to then-New York Times reporter Anne Kornblut but left his wife and began publicly dating Guthrie. The two married December 2005, but the marriage had dissolved by January 2009.

Guthrie was later romantically linked to political consultant Mi­chael Feldman, a former aide to Al Gore.  

10. Her dream is to play guitar with Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin. She admitted this in a question-and-answer session with Today viewers.

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Ice Age: Continental Drift: Film Review

Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel gets a well-earned promotion from series mascot to plot catalyst in Ice Age: Continental Drift, the anticipated fourth entry in the hugely successful computer-animated franchise.

As Scrat’s star rises, however, the series’ momentum stalls. Faced with the prospect of deviating from the well-trodden tracks of its predecessors, the scriptwriters clearly got cold feet, merely substituting kid-friendly pirates for the kid-friendly dinos of 2009’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs as Manny the woolly mammoth and his prehistoric cohorts embark on yet another epic journey studded with sentimental bromides.

PHOTOS: 28 of Summer's Most Anticipated Movies

None of this will matter to the young target audience, who will giggle along with the helter-skelter action sequences and the fusillade of wisecracks and sight gags.

The last of three animated tentpoles to roll out this summer -- after DreamWorks’ Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and Pixar’s Brave, Fox’s technically assured 3D offering still can expect a warm reception and successful box office ride.

With the core trio of Manny (Ray Romano), Sid the goofy sloth (a hilarious John Leguizamo) and the tiger Diego (Denis Leary) getting a bit long in the tooth -- it’s nearly 10 years between the first Ice Age and this one -- scriptwriters Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs corral a menagerie of newcomers and shoehorn in several subplots to distract from a musty storyline.

In this go-round, the world literally falls apart as Scrat’s (Chris Wedge) Sisyphean pursuit of his prized acorn results in a seismic shift that tears asunder Earth’s prehistoric supercontinent, Pangea. (The filmmakers have as little regard for geological history as they did for paleontology in the previous installment.)

VIDEO: 'Ice Age: Continental Drift' Trailer Teases Peter Dinklage’s Orangutan Pirate

Our mismatched heroes are set adrift on a chunk of ice, with Manny separated from his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) and their now-teenage daughter, Peaches (Keke Palmer, who also sings the end-credits song “We Are”).

They’ve picked up a troublesome stowaway in the form of Sid’s Beverly Hillbillies-like granny (Wanda Sykes), while back on shore, Peaches is trying to keep up with the cool-kid mammoths (hip-hop star Drake, rapper Nicki Minaj and Glee cheerleader Heather Morris) and managing to alienate her best friend, Louis, a molehog voiced by Josh Gad (star of the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon.)

Peter Dinklage voices the best of the new recruits, a simian pirate king with very bad teeth named Captain Gutt. His ragtag crew of high-seas marauders, which includes a love interest for Diego in Shira the white tiger (Jennifer Lopez), join Mother Nature at her crankiest in trying to thwart Manny and company’s journey home.

STORY: Animation Smackdown: 'Madagascar 3,' 'Brave,' 'Ice Age' Crowd the Summer Schedule

It’s familiar, drawn-out shtick, and the humor lacks the subtlety of the first and best Ice Age, but there are some visually inventive high points.

The wordless interludes featuring Scrat as slapstick comedian nonpareil not only generate the biggest laughs but provide little oases of aesthetic delight. And there’s an unsettling journey through the land of the Sirens, where the atmosphere turns dark and weird for just a moment, before Steve Martino (Horton Hears a Who), co-directing with Michael Thurmeier, steers it back into safer waters.

The animation by Fox’s Blue Sky Studios improves with each installment, and here it is vividly rendered, with the design of each prehistoric critter a marvel of state-of-the-art technology down to the last hair.

Opens: Australia, June 25 (Australia); July 13 (U.S.) (20th Century Fox)
Production company: Blue Sky Studios
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lopez, Wanda Sykes, Keke Palmer
Directors: Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier
Screenwriters: Michael Berg, Jason Fuchs
Executive producers: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Producers: John C. Donkin, Lori Forte
Director of photography: Renato Falcao
Music: John Powell
Editors: James Palumbo, David Ian Salter
Rated PG, 94 minutes

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