Everyone knew it was coming. Following the disappointing box office of Flushed Away, there was speculation that it would happen. And now it is certain: Dreamworks has cut Aardman Animation loose. Sadly, the studio is now also citing the weak performance of the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as an added reason for the end of the partnership. Aside from winning prestigious awards, that film made more than $192 million worldwide (actually, only $20 million more than Flushed Away). I guess when you’re used to Shrek 2-size figures ($920 million), though, a lot of numbers look small.

I’m not too worried about Aardman. They were doing amazing work before the Dreamworks deal, and they’ll do amazing work after. The animation studio still has a thing going with CBS, which is sitting on seven episodes of a Creature Comforts series, which I think is based on Nick Park’s Oscar-winning short. However, there may not be any features from Aardman for awhile. I was very upset to learn that Crood Awakening, which was co-written by John Cleese and was to be the next Aardman feature, is being left behind at Dreamworks, where it will presumably be shelved for good. I’m sure that Dreamworks is hoping the Shrek movies will never lose their steam, but I just can’t believe that there’s much more to do with those characters.

After two years and a shoot that was a challenge, by all accounts, Factory Girl is finally making its way to a theater near you (or me, at least.) The film is a biopic of Andy Warhol hanger-on Edie Sedgwick, who breezed into the artist’s life, hung around his circle for a short time while living on the dime of her rich family, and was then spit out the other side of the ‘factory’ with a drug habit and psychological problems that would leave her dead at 28. The film’s notoriety has been two-fold: it’s something of a public coming-out for star Sienna Miller, who has felled forests with all the tabloid fodder she’s generated with her personal life, but drawn little attention for her acting work until now. The film was also threatened with crippling litigation from Bob Dylan, who felt that a harmonica-chewing, folk-singing hipster-icon character played by Hayden Christensen was an unflattering, biographical portrait of him.

Christensen is in Tokyo, doing location shooting for the upcoming science-fiction film, Jumper, and could not attend this week’s junket for Factory Girl. Those on hand included director George Hickenlooper, Sienna Miller, and Guy Pearce, who embodies the iconic Warhol, right down to his blotchy, pock-marked skin and ethereal accent. Here’s a sampling of what went on:

Sienna Miller

Cinematical: Talk about the climactic scene, where your character confronts Andy Warhol in the restaurant. How did you prepare for such an emotional scene, and how did the director guide you through it? “That was a really intimidating scene, because it was actually our second day of shooting on the movie. It just so happens that schedules sometimes work out like that, and I was obviously very nervous. I didn’t know anyone, but in a way that helped with the feeling of vulnerability, and George…..what George has an amazing ability to do for me is to create an environment that’s very safe and very trusting, so that you feel you have the ability to go as far as you want to go, and it’s never too far. He’s very embracing of an actor’s journey. He just sort of made me feel protected and reassured and comforted and encouraged, constantly. And it really helped, to be supported like that, because you feel like you want to do well for that person.”

According to a story at superherohype.com, the secret code name under which The Dark Knight will be filming in Chicago has been cracked already. The shooting title for the film will be ‘Rory’s First Kiss,’ and the film will shoot for over 80 days in the summer. Rory is the name of Christopher Nolan’s son, and someone put that together with the source story over at Reel Chicago very quickly. So now you can all go to Chicago and bother Batman while he’s trying to shoot his scenes.Why is this movie being filmed in Chicago anyway? Is Chicago a major hub for filming big action extravaganzas like this one? What’s the attraction? Tax breaks? By the way, Batman Begins was also filmed under a code name: Intimidation Game. The other big Bat news of late — the question of who will take on the role of Rachel Dawes now that Katie Holmes has vacated the part for greener pastures — is still up in the air. When something changes, we’ll let you know.

When a fansite dedicated to Poltergeist III announced news of a possible Poltergeist IV, frankly my first question was — why is there a Poltergeist III website in the first place? As pointed out by webmaster David Furtney on the site’s home page “even bad movies have some good things about them.” Fair enough. This past Saturday Furtney received some news from MGM senior executive vice-president Charles Cohen. “We are working on a Poltergeist idea, and hope to have some news to announce shortly. Stay tuned.”

Frankly, I feel about as revved up for this as I did about the War Games sequel I posted about back in October, which is to say not at all. After all this time, does the Poltergeist franchise name still carry any clout? Granted, the original is a classic, but didn’t anyone learn anything from the sequels? The series initiated with 1982’s Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper, though the film’s style seems to owe more to writer and producer Steven Spielberg. In the film, a nice suburban family named Freeling are beset by all manner of supernatural phenomenon in what had to be the flashiest haunted house movie up until that time. A sequel was released in 1986 and another in 1988, with Poltergeist: The Legacy, an in-name only TV spin-off, launching in 1996. This is not the first time sequel sequel talk has circulated, in fact Furtney has a section of his site dedicated specifically to rumors of a Poltergeist IV.