Summer may be winding down but there’s still some visual effects magic to be found this weekend in Paramount Pictures’ Stardust, a romantic fantasy-adventure pic based on the novel by Neil Gaiman (Coraline, MirrorMask). Featuring an all-star cast led by Robert DiNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes, the second film from Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn takes viewers to an enchanted world of magical spells, witches, ghosts and flying pirates.
In Stardust, a young man promises his beloved that he will retrieve a star that has fallen into the land of Faerie, a magical realm bordering their provincial town. When he gets there, he finds that the fallen star is a beautiful young woman who needs him to protect her from various scheming characters. The film’s extensive visual effects work was created by Double Negative, Framestore-CFC, Machine FX, LipSync Post, Baseblack, The Senate VFX and Cinesite, under visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang (United 93, Pitch Black).
Despite a lot of good reviews, Stardust has only been released to 2,500 theaters, while New Line Cinema’s largely panned action-comedy Rush Hour 3 gets the weekend’s highest theater count at 3,778. Also debuting today is Sony/Revolutio’s Daddy Day Camp, directed by former child actor Fred Savage and starring Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr., and AfterDark Films’ werewolf flick SkinWalkers, which feature vfx by Mr. X Inc. and opens in 737 theaters.
It was just reported today that Stardust director Matthew Vaugh has been hired by Marvel to helm a feature film based on the Thor comic book character. For more information on that project, see the story on this site. To learn more about the visual effects in Stardust, check out the latest issue of Animation Magazine.
