1

I saw an interview with Harlan Ellison where he talked about a studio exec offering him the chance to write the script for a Forbidden Planet remake.  Harlan told him that the film didn't need to be remade, but suggested that the studio (which owned the rights to the film) should instead do a "prequel" about the Krell, and how their invention ended up destroying them.  That idea might be doable, though I'd prefer that it be animated so that the Krell could be depicted as being non-human.

2

What's that abou history repeating itself, the second time as farce?

Somebody tell Hollywood.  Please.

3 Just more proof that Hollywood is utterly and completely  out of ideas. Of course, they're starting to discover anime, so there's a whole other country full of ideas they can screw up. 

4 Keanu Reeves as Klaatu--they might as well have changed the title, too:

The Day The Earth Went "Whoa"

5 An old time screen writer and script doctor said that these days the better scripts are being turned out by TV writers instead of the movie guys........that is so broken on so many levels. Due to the big deflation dead wood is starting to get trimmed in Hollywood. It is predicted that money for new production is going to be tight since the recent average ROI on Hollywood movies has been so crappy. I wonder how many Hollywood name actors could make it as voice actors in Anime?

6

Depends on how big a name "big name" is. Disney got some pretty big cannons to do voice-over work on the Miyazaki dubs. And there have been quite a few big-name actors who have done voice work for Pixar.

Plus, of course, our hero Mako, who made a big contribution to making Samurai Jack what it was.

Mark Hamill has done a lot of voice work. He got a taste for it when doing a radio-play version of Star Wars, and seems to have liked it.

And a lot of actors have done voice work for games, which is nearly the same. "Under a Killing Moon" had a very respectable cast. Most of them were working on film, but James Earl Jones was voice-only. (And he was absolutely awesome.)

7 Re:  Mark Hamill- and how!  There's quite a sizable segment of people for whom the definitive Mark Hamill isn't Luke Skywalker. . . its the Joker.

( though Heath Ledger seems to have displaced Hamill as the definitive Joker. . . )

8 James Earl Jones, is the voice over king (This is CNN). Kathleen Turner can do it. I don't follow the game scene but considering the money available I shouldn't be surprised. I've listened to some of the voice work as the nearby teeners sneak in to play it on the King Kong big screen. The work on Gears of something seemed solid. Didn't know about Mark Hamil. I'm having a brain fart and can't remember who was in Spirited Away. I just have trouble picturing Tom Cruise doing it for some reason.

9

Hamill became a big name in video game work because of the Wing Commander series. But he also did one of the Gabriel Knight games, and was in Full Throttle, and StarSiege, and just a bunch of other stuff.

I've heard that actors really do enjoy doing voice work. It doesn't pay as well, of course, but it's also not as wearing. No makup, no costumes, no hot lights, just you and a microphone in an anechoic chamber. It does mean you have only your voice to work with to convey what you're supposed to; no facial expressions or body language, but that's not really all that big a deal for a competent actor.

Hamill is also in Avatar. He did the voice of "Fire Lord Ozai", according to IMDB.

I wonder if part of why Hamill likes voice work is because of his face. He got in a pretty serious traffic accident once, and his face got all cut up, and now it's pretty seriously scarred. That happened during the production of Star Wars, in fact, and it gave the makup artists quite a challenge.

10 If you've ever seen the "Star wars Holiday Special" (and I hope for the sake of your sanity you haven't), Hamill is wearing makeup that makes him look like a Ken-doll. Apparently it was made a year or so after the accident.

11

Stacy Keach also has a major face scar. And he has been doing a lot of narration for documentaries. I wonder if that's related.

12 Another reason actors probably enjoy voice work is that they are trained to do it.  A lot of movie dialog is "looped" (rerecorded) in a studio after the film is cut.  So voice recording is sort of "acting lite"...just as you say.

Hammill got his mug bashed being dopey young kid on a motorcycle (not that I would, er, know anything about that).  He was driving from one parking lot to another and failed to noticed the two lots were not connected and in fact the one he was heading to was four feet lower than the one he was on.  They wrote the scene where Luke gets his face whacked by the ice cave critter into The Empire Strikes Back to proved a cover story for why he looked so different in the second film.  I guess they haven't developed plastic surgery in the SW universe.