It’s a Christmas morning, and I’m sitting in a small red cottage in the middle of vast fields of snow in eastern Finland, close to the city of Kotka. I’ve just slept almost 10 hours, which is exactly 5 hours more that I’ve slept on a nightly basis for the last two months – so I feel strangely rested, peaceful and clear-headed.

I thought about writing briefly about few new things going on right now – and then eat myself unconscious!

First and foremost, we’ve just updated the Iron Sky website. Jarmo Puskala, scriptwriter/webmaster, did a great job fighting against loads of vile and vicious viruses on all of our sites (the problem’s now fixed, thanks J!), and smashing together the new layout for the website. At first look, it might not seem that different from what it used to be, but the functionalities are much better and the site works better to what we believe web sites are used today. Our philosophy in the web design is to feed stuff from many sources to the front page, and activate our users to join our community in whatever way they feel the best.

Because of this, on the frontpage we’re feeding our Flickr feed, YouTube feed, Wreckamovie feed and our blog in the form of News from the Front and Blog. From the Press page you’ll find latest Iron Sky -related articles and can read all of the earlier articles through our Delicious feed
From the Community page you’ll find the main community sites we’re active with, and best ways you can jump in and become one with the Iron Sky.

The Support page encourages you to blog and tweet about Iron Sky to help us spread the word around the word – remember, we have basically a marketing budget of zero, so we need *all* the help we can get from the community!

Most interestingly, a new feature we’ve been testing for some time now, and activated to full burn after the site re-design is the Demand Iron Sky. The idea here is pretty simple: you tell us which city you live in, and let us know you’d like to see the film on theaters in your city. The more people we have from your city signing up, the easier it’s for us to get a theatrical distribution there. So be active, and get your friends to Demand Iron Sky, too!

In other news, we’re happy to announce that we’ve secured more funding from Europe: both The Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Eurimages have granted us production support for Iron Sky, a sum totaling up to about 800000€! So merry christmas to us! :)

Oh, if you want to give us a christmas present, here’s our wishlist:

1. Demand Iron Sky. If you’ve already demanded, get someone you know demand for it. Muchos gracias!

2. Watch Iron Sky teaser on YouTube. I know you’ve already seen it, but we’d like to get above 1 million views before the end of the year, so re-watch it and share it on Facebook and Twitter!

Oh, and if you feel extremely generous, buy War Bond, and help us make the film look as good as it should – every dollar counts, trust me!

Thanks, everyone!

Alright, I think that’s about it. The rice porridge is being carried on the table as we speak, and the sauna is heating up. So it’s time for me – on behalf of the whole Iron Sky team in Finland, Germany and Canada – to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

We’ve got some good news!

The British Stealth Media Group will be handling the world sales of Iron Sky and fund the film with up to 1 million euro. This means they will be in charge of selling it to distributors around the world and we here at Energia and Blind Spot can concentrate on actually making the film. Stealth will begin marketing Iron Sky this week at the American Film Market.

Currently we have distribution deals in place for Finland (Walt Disney), UK (Revolver), Norway (Euforia) and Poland (Kino Swiat).

The actual sum of Stealth’s investment will be between 500,000 and 1 million euro depending on how negotiations go with other potential investors. The final budget for Iron Sky will be at least 5 million euro. However what’s important is that we know now that we can stay on track with the timetable and start shooting early next year.

What we’ve done lately is a lot of planning. Starting from concrete things like schedules and renting locations (most of wich will be in and around Frankfurt, Germany) to creating storyboards and animatics. Set design is also going ahead, with set building starting a month or two before the shooting.

For the last couple of months Timo and Iron Sky writer Johanna Sinisalo have also been working with screenwriter Michael Kalesniko (best known for Howard Stern’s Private Parts and currently working on a comedy with David Fincher) on polishing the English language dialogue.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

It’s time for the makers of the Iron Sky game, the Jyväskylä, Finland based IGIOS, to step out of the proverbial closet. They have released the community pages for the game, titled Iron Sky: Operation Highjump on Wreckamovie, Facebook and Twitter.

You might have heard that someone was already making a game based on Iron Sky - that’s us.

We are looking forward to working together with the WreckAMovie community on a game that will mirror the enthusiasm and creativity seen in Star Wreck and Iron Sky -movies. We, the people behind the production, are fans of the movies as well as gamers, and we have no intention of making another half-assed movie-based game that limits itself to retelling the plot of the movie. Rather, we want to tell a story of our own: one that is related to the one told in the movie, but can also stand on it’s own.

The first task is already up, and so are our brand new pages in Twitter and Facebook (links attached). Welcome aboard, based on the quality of shots in we’ve already seen here in WreckAMovie, we believe that the community here can provide us some great insights and help us make an even better game.

- Matti Delahay, IGIOS

Operation Highjump will be a real time 3rd person action adventure game set in the WWII era. A standalone story in the world of Iron Sky, the plot revolves around a secret underground Nazi base in the Antarctic. Rather than plain vanilla technical and graphic splendour, we aim for good playability, immersive plot content, strong dialogue and atmospheric environments. (Yes, that’s what they all say. But we mean it.) Add a nice big cup of strong, black humour, and you’ve got a general idea of what we’re shooting for.

You can read more about the real-world Operation Highjump at Wikipedia. Also known as “The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946-47″, it was a massive naval operation where a taskforce consisting of 4,700 men, 13 ships, and several aircraft sailed to the Antarctic. Officially it was supposed to be a training mission, but conspiracy theories suggest it was a full-blown military operation to wipe out the secret Nazi base in the Antarctic.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The collaborative film production platform Wreckamovie we’ve been working on for quite some time now, has been chosen as one of the 36 nominees from Nordic countries to compete for the Rising Star of the North -award at SIME09. It’s a great honour for us to be chosen as one of the companies, and we are competing against companies like Spotify.

Last year, Wreckamovie won the Mindtrek award, and this year we were already one of the winners at World Summit Awards - so SIME nomination continues the list nicely!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

I just learned a new word - recce. Didn’t know what it was until I embarked on one, and now I know. It’s basically a trip where you check the possible shooting locations - known also as location scouting.

Wikipedia definition is quite clear:

Recce (pronounced “recky”) is a military term that has been borrowed by media production in the United Kingdom, derived from “reconnoiter” (the verb form of “reconnaissance”). It is a pre-filming visit to a location to work out its suitability for shooting, including access to necessary facilities and assessment of any potential lighting or sound issues.

We did the first Iron Sky location scouting some two weeks ago in Frankfurt area, where we are planning to shoot most of the film - well, at least as much as possible.

Hessen area is quite good for filming Iron Sky, a film that takes place both in the Far Side of the Moon and New York, because it has quite a nice skyline and a lot of military- and mining facilities close by. We’re trying to avoid shooting in New York itself as much as possible, given the fact that although it’s quite easy to shoot there, it can become quite damn expensive.

We visited some bunkers, some quite nice skyscrapers, a botanical garden and finally Club Cocoon - so far the most impressive club I’ve seen in my life - check out their site, it’s awesome.

The most amazing location we visited was called Großmarkthalle in the middle of Frankfurt. I can understand where the word “Groß” comes from - it used to be the biggest building with one huge open space in it before the War. Being used as a vegetable market for the most part of the last century, the morbid side is that it was also being used as the collecting point for the Jews during the WWII, who were being sent over to concentration camps all over Europe.

One - admittably quite a big - thing Frankfurt is missing is a proper studio. They have huge studios all over Germany, but none in Frankfurt. So we need to build one by ourselves.

The place we’re planning to turn into our studio is located in a closed military area used by both the Nazis and later by the US troops which is now mainly a big storage area for Dunlop wheels.

Possible studio location for Iron Sky. Photo by Ulrika von Vegesack.

The place has tens of different kind of buildings slowly crumbling away unused, some quite nice bunkers and a big plane hangar which we could turn into our studio. It’s been left almost completely unattended for several years, which gives the place a nice not-too-far-post-nuclear-war look and feel, with streets and buildings still in place, but heavily overgrown and no living soul anywhere. It actually screams to be used as a location for a radioactive zombie film.

So far, Frankfurt seems like a good choice for shootings. We will continue to search for some locations, and next time I’m looking forward into seeing some mines and underground tunnels!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The team behind the films Star Wreck and Iron Sky has been awarded at the World Summit Awards with their online film studio Wreck a Movie. Officially the ceremony was to be held in June, but the Swine Flu outbreak caused it to be postponed until September.

The winning team grinning like idiots after the MindTrek win :)

Wreck a Movie won the 20,000-euro first prize at the Finnish MindTrek event last year, and was consequently chosen as the Finnish representative at the World Summit Awards. The WSA is a biennial e-content contest, funded by the United Nations among others, and is one of the largest of its kind globally.

This is the first time that the WSA first prize has gone to Finland since 2003, when Sulake won the award for their service Habbo Hotel, which has millions of fans.

Wreck a Movie is a production platform focused on community-driven film making - a virtual film studio, according to the team. It is a means for filmmakers from around the world to work on their pictures together with the community, regardless of the location, occupation or resources of the participants. It is free for both users and featured projects.

“Naturally it is encouraging to be rewarded, but it is my principal hope that this may act as a signal to both international and Finnish filmmakers that Wreck a Movie is a platform worth trying out,” says Timo Vuorensola, director and one of the primary developers of the platform. “Currently we have going about a hundred productions from music videos to feature films, and the services, productions and user base of the virtual studio are increasing steadily.”

Visit the Wreck a Movie platform at www.wreckamovie.com.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Vorwärtz!

After Cannes, things have been moving on with quite a pace. We were able to close most of the funding for Iron Sky at Cannes, so it means that we now actually have a schedule and we really need to start pushing to get things done!

In short, the schedule dictates that Iron Sky will be shot in January 2010, and the film will be finished (not out, though) in January 2011. It’s still a rough estimate, but the best we have for now.

For CGI, here’s how we’re planning to do: we shook hands with a London-based post production house Molinaire. We’ll fly Samuli and his team to London, to Molinaire, to work on the Iron Sky’s special effects once the time is right. This way, we’ll be able to take all the advantage of Samuli and his world class skilled team, without having to worry about building the infrastructure and renderyards to Tampere, and get to work with one of the best CGI people out there.

Right now I’m most worried about finding the locations we need to shoot Iron Sky. We’re planning to utilize an old and abandoned US Army military area located close to Frankfurt for the studio - they have a huge old sport hall that could suit our needs quite well, and possibly some quite interesting other locations as well.

We had an alternative to this place - an old Nazi-era military bunker also close to Frankfurt. The only problem was that there was too much of sheep and TNT in the area. Yeah, sheep and TNT. I can’t get the image out of my head, us shooting scenes on the Moon in the front yard of the bunker, being forced to stop shooting every now and then because a sheep explodes. KABOOM. Sounds quite Pythoneqsue.

Oh, one thing more! I’m not sure if we already wrote about it here, but we’ve moved! The Iron Sky office and Star Wreck Store hauled it’s (quite fat) ass to the other side of the Tampere center, to Hämeenkatu, where we teamed up with Restate, a brand new digital content developer company led by Erik Lydén. As always, the Star Wreck Store is open for visitors, so if you want to take a peek at the Iron Sky production, why not stop by at Hämeenkatu 30 B 1a.

One last thing - I need some of your suggestions for reference films that I should watch. I’ve set up a task where I describe a bit more, just go to Wreckamovie and check it out.

BTW, if there’s any Spotify users out there, I’ve created a collaborative Iron Sky playlist for Spotify, where I’m dragging every now and then some music I think somehow fits the mood of Iron Sky. If you have any ideas, you can put some songs there as well - just open this link to Spotify and start playlisting.

I can’t seem to end this post… But here goes - I also spotted that we have now our own Iron Sky entry on IMDB´- and the good ol’ Wikipedia entry still exists.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The Finnish Film Foundation just released their latest funding decisions.

Obiously the big news for us is that Iron Sky will be receiving 800,000€ in production support. Most Finnish films receive support from the Foundation and it’s often a big part of the budget. We’re obiously very, very happy of their support. If you read Finnish there’s a lot of other info on the film as well, maybe even bit of a spoiler in the synopsis, so watch out.

Also, it’s been very interesting lately to read the support decisions. There are many interesting projects in developement right now and I’d go as a far as saying that the field of Finnish film is changing. The gem (that has absolutely nothing to do with us) in this month’s support decisions was called Zombie-Risteily, that would translate to “Zombie Cruise” about a cruise ship overrun with, you guessed it, Zombies! And what’s even better for us Finns is that’s it’s one of the ferries sailing between Sweden and Finland - also affectionately known as “drilling platforms” and many other names. Basicly they are huge cruise ships with about 2000-3000 passengers that are not so much going somewhere as going to the ship to get absolutely and totally wasted. There are thousand and one stories to be told on those ships and zero films thus far.

Also in the scripting stages is a film adaptation of Kimmo Risto Isomäki’s book Sands of Sarasvati. A thriller about the climate change - and trust me, it’s good. It should also adapt to the screen very well. If you want to have a look the comic adaptation is already translated into english, but the translation of the novel isn’t out just yet.

Other interesting genre-ish films are Haaska (aka. Carcass) - a horror film about a nature photographer in the Finnish wilderness. And Lykantropia (Lycantrophy) that’s to be a drama/thriller about child killing wolves in the 19th century.

And since we’re talking about Finnish films I can’t resist gushing on about the teaser for Mothgirl, upcoming film from our friend Toni Pykäläniemi.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The Iron Sky team currently at the Cannes film festival announced the latest additions to the films cast today. Not only is the cast great, but amazingly it includes someone who’s taller than Timo!

Götz Otto as Klaus Adler

German actor Götz Otto will step in the boots of the intelligence officer Klaus Adler, a fanatic Moon Nazi devoted on invading the Earth. Otto has previously appeared in numerous feature films and tv-series, including attempting to kill James Bond as Mr. Stamper in the film Tomorrow Never Dies.

“When I first heard about Iron Sky, I instantly realized that it’s a really wicked idea, something only a Finn could come up with. Being German I thought it would be time for a comedy and spoof about this topic.” Otto comments.

According to Timo: “My main interest was to find an actor who’s shorter than me, and for this there’s no one better than almost two meter tall Otto. Götz is a humouristic actor and a real gentleman with the right kind of rough charm and a voice that blow the windshield off the microphone.”

The other two new cast members attached to Iron Sky are also from Germany. Veteran actor Tilo Prückner (The Neverending Story) will design the wunderwaffe of the Fourth Reich as the Nazi scientist Doktor Richter.

The legendary Udo Kier (Dogville, Blade, Shadow of the Vampire) will appear as the Nazi Moon base commander Wolfgang Höss.

Julia Dietze as Renate Richter

Earlier German actress Julia Dietze (1½ Ritter) joined the cast as Moon Nazi officer Renate Richter, who is sent to Earth with her fiancé Klaus Adler to find out if our planet is ripe for the Fourth Reich.

p.s. The Iron Sky team are attending the Cannes Film Festival 2009. Daily video blogs will be released from 13th of May onward on our YouTube channel.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

We just released a motion poster for Iron Sky! And it does look pretty freaking sweet.

Check out the High quality version of the motion poster on the Iron Sky website!

In addition we released new artwork, including a new teaser poster and pictures of the main cast in character! I’ll tell you more about the casting in a second when we get the press release out. Meanwhile enjoy the pictures.

Julia Dietze as Renate Richter

Götz Otto as Klaus Adler

Iron Sky teaser poster

You can find more concept art on the propaganda page.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

This is the first episode of Truth Today, a mock-newspaper we made with the WreckAMovie community for Berlin Film Festival 2009 to promote Iron Sky.

Truth Today 1/2018

And here, as a reminder, is again the episode where the paperboy was spreading the Truth in Berlin:

We are right now working on the next episode of Truth Today on WreckAMovie - so if you you’d like to help us, come over here and give a Shot!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Iron Sky’s scriptwriter Johanna Sinisalo has been nominated for the internationally highly respected Nebula Award with her novellette Baby Doll. The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years.

Way to go, Johanna! Let’s hope we’ll see her again there in 2011, nominated for the best script!

Here’s the complete ballot for the nominees of 2008 Nebula Awards.

Novels
Little Brother - Doctorow, Cory (Tor, Apr08)
Powers - Le Guin, Ursula K. (Harcourt, Sep07)
Cauldron - McDevitt, Jack (Ace, Nov07)
Brasyl - McDonald, Ian (Pyr, May07)
Making Money - Pratchett, Terry (Harper, Sep07)
Superpowers - Schwartz, David J. (Three Rivers Press, Jun08)

Novellas
“The Spacetime Pool” - Asaro, Catherine (Analog, Mar08)
“Dark Heaven” - Benford, Gregory (Alien Crimes, ed. Mike Resnick, SFBC, Jan07)
“Dangerous Space” - Eskridge, Kelley (Dangerous Space, Aqueduct Press, Jun07)
“The Political Prisoner” - Finlay, Charles Coleman (F&SF, Aug08)
“The Duke in His Castle” - Nazarian, Vera (Norilana Books, Jun08)

Novelettes
“If Angels Fight” - Bowes, Richard (F&SF, Feb08)
“Dark Rooms” - Goldstein, Lisa (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov 07)
“Pride and Prometheus” - Kessel, John (F&SF, Jan08)
“Night Wind” - Rosenblum, Mary (Lace and Blade, ed. Deborah J. Ross, Norilana Books, Feb08)
“Baby Doll” - Sinisalo, Johanna (The SFWA European Hall of Fame, ed. James Morrow & Kathryn Morrow, Tor, Jun07 )
“Kaleidoscope” - Wentworth, K.D. (F&SF, May07)

Short Stories
“The Button Bin” - Allen, Mike (Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, Oct07)
“The Dreaming Wind” - Ford, Jeffrey (The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Viking, Jul07)
“Trophy Wives” - Hoffman, Nina Kiriki (Fellowship Fantastic, ed. Martin H. Greenburg and Kerrie Hughes, DAW Books Jan08)
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” - Johnson, Kij (Asimov’s, Jul08)
“The Tomb Wife” - Jones, Gwyneth (F&SF, Aug07)
“Don’t Stop” - Kelly, James Patrick (Asimov’s, Jun07)

Scripts
The Dark Knight - Nolan, Jonathan; Nolan, Christopher, Goyer, David S. (Warner Bros., Jul08)
WALL-E Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (Walt Disney June 2008)
The Shrine - Wright, Brad (Stargate Atlantis, Aug08)

Norton
Graceling - Cashore, Kristin (Harcourt, Oct08)
Lamplighter - Cornish, D.M. (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 2, Putnam Juvenile, May08))
Savvy - Law, Ingrid (Dial, May08)
The Adoration of Jenna Fox - Pearson, Mary E. (Henry Holt and Company, Apr08)
Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) - Wilce, Ysabeau S. (Harcourt, Sep08)

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

This time Iron Sky Signal goes to the 2009 Berlin film festival. See the Truth Today paperboy in action!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Team Energia is packing themselves into my trusty old Passat and soon we’ll be heading to Assembly Winter 2009 at (ex-)Pirkkahalli.

We’ll be handing out the first issue of The Truth Today and well, actually we’ll be playing! So come and beat the Energia house band at Rock Band and win stuff.

That’s about it I guess, now off to the batcave! See you at Assembly. And as long as the wlan at the party place stays up we’ll be Tweeting.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

EDIT 12.02.2009: Scroll down for the video announcement!

Some news for Iron Sky, dear readers. Here’s a press release we just put out:

Julia Dietze will be starring Iron Sky, the science fiction comedy about Nazis from the Dark Side of the Moon. Dietze, who just played opposite Til Schweiger in a German comedy 1½ Ritter, will play the lead role as a Moon Nazi officer who is sent to Earth to find out if our planet is ripe for the Fourth Reich.

“Julia is a perfect opposite to the testosterone-filled Nazis and massive space battles the film’s visual imagery consists mainly of”, says the director of Iron Sky Timo Vuorensola.

Earlier this week the people of Berlin and the EFM visitors were shocked to find out that a secret Nazi Moon base on the dark side of the moon had been spotted by a satellite. The news were delivered by a paperboy handing out copies of a newspaper called The Truth Today.

“The Internet community of Iron Sky helped us again to come up with a kick-ass cost effective marketing campaign which increases our visibility, not only within the industry but also among the audience”, says Tero Kaukomaa from Blind Spot Pictures, who is currently in talks with sales companies in Berlin. “Last year Iron Sky got it’s first blast of publicity when the 2,5 minutes teaser was released on the Internet in May. It started spreading out like wildfire and we’re already closing on to 2 million viewers.” Kaukomaa adds.

Iron Sky is a co-production with Blind Spot Pictures (Finland), Energia Productions (Finland), Cinet (Finland) and 27 Film Productions (Germany).

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.