John Francis Daley

Yeah, I thought it was a typo at first — but no! Two separate film projects are in the news today, one of them based on the Jack London story Call of the Wild and the other one is a play on the title, Cal of the Wild. One has already been made and has just been picked up by a studio for distribution, while the other one was just announced. Here's a breakdown:

Call of the Wild: Starring Christopher Lloyd, Veronica Cartwright, and Wes Studi, this movie was just picked up by Vivendi Entertainment for US distribution. The adaptation of Jack London's story is set in modern-day Montana and "is notable as the first digital 3-D release made entirely with live-action photography, with no CGI."

Cal of the Wild: Hooray for Freaks and Geeks' John Francis Daley (little bro Sam Weir) getting more work! Daley's been writing up a storm in recent years, and he and fellow writer Jonathan Goldstein have been tapped to write the comedy Cal of the Wild for DreamWorks. Based on reality TV shows like Survivor, the story "revolves around Cal Tanner, the fraudulent star of a cable TV survival show, who is forced to keep himself and his female assistant alive when they're put in an actual survival situation." (Sounds a bit like something that some people might wish for Speidi, no?)

Source and Source

• Is now the right time for Oliver Stone's movie W.? — Popwatch
• Speaking of W., here's a list of 10 hilarious political impressions. — Vulture
• Ridley Scott has confirmed that his next project will be a film adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. — Cinematical
• In these tough economic times, can you stomach watching the fabulously wealthy on TV? — TV Filter
• Guillermo del Toro isn't too keen on the idea of Peter Jackson helping him film The Hobbit. — MTV Movies Blog
• Siiiiiiigh: More people are watching Knight Rider than Pushing Daisies. — Tuned In
• Girl crush of the day: Japanese all-girl rockabilly band The 5678's. — GiggleSugar
• An interview with John Francis Daley, who will always be Sam Wier to me. — The TV Addict

Image courtesy of Lionsgate

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni — cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig — took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. I've already told you how the series got started and passed on some tales from the set. In today's final installment, I have trivia from the show, plus news on everyone's new projects. Here goes:

• Linda Cardellini still has the green Army jacket that was practically a part of her body when she played Lindsay. "I thought about bringing it," she told the audience, "but I thought I might look like a gigantic loser."
• Sarah Hagan, who played the conservative Millie, was apparently a shocking amount like her character. Cardellini recalled that in one scene, Millie was supposed to ask Lindsay if Kim "fornicates," but Hagan (who, Cardellini recalled, hadn't talked much about sex at that time) accidentally asked if she "fornicated it." That take ended up in the show.
• Busy Philipps only did the show because she ran into Cardellini in the airport in LA shortly before the show was supposed to start. Philipps' agent had been against her taking the role of Kim Kelly because it was initially only a guest spot for the pilot, but Cardellini — whom she'd known in college — insisted that working together would be fun.
• Samm Levine and Martin Starr were both terrible about learning their lines and would typically just cram the morning of the shoot.
• Linda mastered the art of never eating food on screen; in the dinner scenes, she mostly just pushes her food around and gestures with it, which Paul Feig pointed out is "very teenage girl." She said it was all because of an early job where she didn't realize that if she ate food in one take, she'd need to eat in every take; that experience turned her off lasagna for 10 years. Philipps said it took a Freaks and Geeks scene where she ate more than a dozen donuts over the course of shooting for her to learn that lesson.

To hear my favorite story from the whole discussion and see where you can find your favorite Freaks and Geeks now, just read more

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni — cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig — took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. Yesterday, I told you how the series got started; today, I have tales of what it was like on set:

• While it seems like the whole cast genuinely likes each other now, that wasn't always the case. "It was really too much like high school sometimes," Cardellini said, with cliques and alliances forming and disbanding.
• Daley said at the time of the show, he was "14 years old and alone," and the big kids wouldn't let him hang out with them. But, he acknowledged, it probably would have been weird to have a young teenager hanging out with actors who were out of high school.
• Some of the nastiest disputes on the set came between Philipps and James Franco. At the time, Philipps said, they could barely even speak to each other: "It was legendary how much we hated each other."

To hear about the biggest dispute Philipps and Franco ever had, and to see where the characters might have gone had there been a season two, just read more

John Francis Daley played the ultimate geeky kid, Sam Weir, on the short lived but wonderful Freaks and Geeks. The little brother of the show's main character, Sam was all about morals, manners, action figures and Saturday Night Live. Though the show is set during the 80's when computers were new on the scene, there are plenty of techie jokes to go around.

My favorite thing about the Sam character is that unlike most nice guys, he finishes first. He may be awkward about his crush on the school cheerleader, but he's actually cool enough to win her attention. Got some geek photos of your own? Add photos of yourself, your best friend or that one geeky guy to the geeksugar Geek of the Week group or send us an e-mail nominating your favorite celebrity.