Fox Reveals 2001 Slate

Twentieth Century Fox invites you to a showcase of forthcoming films'. That was the wording of an invite received at the Empire Online offices last week, and today Fox were as good as their word, treating a select group to an exclusive showing of trailers, clips and extended footage from a number of their upcoming productions. One of the first up was Planet of the Apes, which began with the second trailer followed by rough-ish footage from the rest of the movie. 'We expect this to spawn a franchise of ape movies,' promised Fox UK's Marketing Director, who asked the audience to spot Charlton Heston. Eagle-eyed viewers found Heston as an ageing Ape who on what looks like his death bed says 'I warn you this human [Mark Wahlberg] holds the secret to all our histories.' Planet of the Apes was followed by a series of first-look trailers including ones for Dr Doolittle 2, Luc Besson's Kiss of The Dragon and John Woo's Windtalkers. One film which really stood out on the slate was Behind Enemy Lines - a thriller starring Owen Wilson as a US fighter pilot who's shot down in Bosnia when his plane photographs the location of a mass grave. Gene Hackman plays Wilson's commanding officer who has to get his man out alive. That plot may sounds pretty run of the mill - but one look at the footage revealed some special effects that even in their unpolished state will blow filmgoers' minds. Two shots in particular impressed this reviewer - one showing a fighter plane sliced in two by a surface-to-air missile, and another showing the shockwave caused by a personnel mine. Another favourite was some raw footage from the Michael Douglas thriller Don't Say A Word, in which Douglas plays a psychiatrist called in to oversee a pro-bono case of an 18-year-old murderess, who in turn is being tracked down by kidnapper Sean Bean. With this little lot under its belt - not to mention Episode II and Bond 20 which Fox distributes in the UK - Twentieth Century Fox should be sitting pretty for the next 12-18 months, while film fans salivate at the prospect of such an array of goodies.