Sleepydog CEO, Toby Moores will chair a panel discussion at this year’s Media Festival, on how IPTV will change the world.

Looking at YouView and beyond, and what it could mean for business, panel members will include:

• > Richard Halton, Chief Executive, YouView
• > Bismarck Lepe, Founder and President of Products, Ooyala

> Michael Barry, Director of Programming and Creative, BT Vision

The Media Festival is an industry conference and networking event which attracts hundreds of delegates from across music, TV, film, games, mobile, online and technology.

The festival is being held at The Palace Hotel, Manchester from Wed 17th – Fri 19th November 2010. For ticketing information and to register your attendance, please visit The Media Festival website.

It’s been three years since Sleepydog relocated to the historic town of Market Harborough, and we felt the time was now right to move again!

We’ve not gone far though, just a short walk from the centre of town to brighter, nicer premises.

We’re now practically next door to Market Harborough’s train station, meaning we’re just a short hop from our associates in London.

Our new address is:

Sleepydog Ltd,
Britannia House,
Fernie Road,
Market Harborough,
Leicestershire,
LE16 7PH,
UNITED KINGDOM.

Tel: +44 (0)1858 435 600
Fax: +44 (0)1858 435 601
Email: info@www.sleepydog.co.uk

Times Online today hosted a live Q&A with best-selling author and journalist, Malcom Gladwell.

Best known for his books, The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009), Gladwell has also been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996.

Sleepydog CEO, Toby Moores took the opportunity to ask a few questions on social media, effectiveness vs. efficiency and the self-referential nature of a media-celebrity-political complex.

Visit Times Online to catch up on the conversation.

Early risers in Australia were treated to a preview of Weird & Wonderful Hotels, when we featured on Channel 9′s morning show, Kerri-Anne.

The segment included clips from our visits to the Null Stern Hotel, Marqués de Riscal, The Tea Factory, Hostel Celica and Tongabezi Lodge.

For those of you not from Down Under, you can watch the clip from Kerri-Anne’s show here.

Weird & Wonderful Hotels is being broadcast throughout April and May on the Nat Geo Adventure channel.

National Geographic Channels International (NGCI) has today announced the acquisition of Sleepydog’s first television series, Weird & Wonderful Hotels!

The series will air in April 2010 on NGCI’s Nat Geo Adventure channel, which is available in more than 40 countries around the world including: Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Latin America, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, Africa and the Middle East.

Each episode showcases the world’s most unique and peculiar lodging experiences, and uncovers the inspiration behind these one-of-a-kind destinations. Accommodations range from the delightfully rustic to the outright bizarre!

“Weird and Wonderful Hotels is full of quirky charm as it offers an exclusive tour of the world’s most unusual spots to rest your head along with luxurious retreats and eco-friendly lodges. The series is a natural fit for the Nat Geo Adventure audience,” said Carlyn Staudt, Senior Vice President of Global Acquisitions for National Geographic Channel.

Be sure to take a look at our video preview for a first look at the show.

Jean-Luc Godard memorably remarked that “all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun“, but because we like to put a fresh twist on everything, in Slingers one of our girls is a gun. The relationship that stems from Frank carrying her and not quite understanding her makes for some interesting situations and it’s this odd-couple dynamic that gets one of the biggest grins from people discussing the potential of the show.

Slingers was built around it characters first and foremost. If you like them then you’ll follow them anywhere. Luckily the setting and the technology that forms the backdrop makes for some interesting situations, but as Toby is fond of saying, if you follow Frank into a bar for a quiet drink something is going to happen. He’s just that kind of guy.

But we also spent a great deal of time thinking about current technology and where its heading. We’ll have missed stuff for sure, but every now and again we spot something that either makes us redraft a scene (because the future happens far faster these days) or smile because we know we’re not too far off the mark. Nik recently pushed this article our way via Twitter and you could be looking at one of GUN’s ancestors – right down to the beginnings of her signature green glow:

A lot of modern technology is currently catching up with the science fiction we grew up on, but that’s ok. Slingers is also about style and attitude and that’s something that our mid-Atlantic aesthetic (American scale combined with a British sensibility) has in spades. Thinking about it in that way probably goes a long way to explain the lasting influence of a character like Dredd. Or maybe it’s just his ability to kick ass and arse alike:

Slingers has killer robots too. We’re hoping our budget is as unflappable as Joe Dredd.

Note: You can check out some fan art and read the SFX magazine piece on Slingers here.

Sleepydog’s forthcoming television series, Slingers has been featured in the latest issue of SFX magazine.

Talking about how we developed the Slingers concept, writer Mike Atherton said:

“Our approach was always that Slingers would be a ’60s-style heist show that just happened to be set in space. I’m not trying to dismiss the SF element because I live and breathe this stuff myself, but our initial take was to try and focus on something different from just the tech and the ships.”

The coverage also includes some fantastic concept art by the Brownlee Brothers, so grab a copy of this month’s SFX magazine to read the full article.

Become a fan of Slingers and keep up-to-date with all the latest news by joining our Facebook group!

Season one of Weird & Wonderful Hotels is now complete, and we couldn’t wait to share this video preview with you!

Later this month, The Fremantle Corporation will be promoting the show at NATPE, an industry event which attracts TV execs from more than 70 countries worldwide.

We’ll be posting more details of where and when you’ll be able to watch the full series in the near future, so watch this space!

On the set of the Slingers sizzle, Sean Pertwee talks to writer, Mike Atherton about his thoughts on our TV project and their shared love of 2000AD.

Slingers writer, Mike Atherton, was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of James Cameron’s AVATAR last week. He published one of the very first reviews of the movie for TWITCH, which we thought we’d share here. Tickets are on sale already… go, go go!

I just got back home from the world premiere of Avatar here in London. It’s safe to keep reading. You are entering a spoiler-free zone.

I wasn’t expecting much. I attended the 15 minute IMAX preview a few months back and out of context what I saw was pretty. Very pretty. The immersive technology was an obvious step up, but the scenes with the marines came across as just weird on the eye and the sequences with all the alien fauna gave me flashbacks to James Mason clambering through mushrooms forests in Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But what really had me worried was the story.

There’s a lot of that same worry online. Avatar is often mentioned in the same breath as Ferngully: The Last Rainforest and Dances with Wolves, and then there was *that* South Park episode. I arrived this evening to a blue carpet event (I see what they did there) surrounded by press and the stars of the film, actually surprised at the invite to be honest. Because I’ve been very cynical online. I’m not sure if it was oversight on the part of SKY MOVIES HD who invited me or just simple faith in the movie, but it was stressed to me that I should be as honest as possible in the review. So here goes.

All those worries are completely justified. There’s hardly a single moment of truly original story telling up on the screen. The characters are developed exactly as you think they will be and key moments at the climax of the movie are sign posted clearly early on. If you think you’ve already seen James Cameron’s Avatar then there’s a good chance you’re right. And none of that matters.

It’s the combination of story and technology that reeled me in. The visual depth of the 3D technology is not completely immersive on its own, but Cameron understands that. The opening sequence seems timed to let your brain get around the eye candy while the introduction to Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully slowly begins to draw you in. By the time I met Sigourney Weaver the 3D element had settled down and simply felt comfortable. By the time I met the Na’vi I was immersed. And somehow the story had me too.

I’m a story guy so usually I like to be surprised. If I can work out where a movie is going then I get annoyed. But because Avatar’s plot, to me at least, was so familiar I actually began to concentrate on how well Cameron had constructed it. By the time the first simple arrow-head bounced off a gun ship I was enthralled. Because I knew what was coming and that Cameron was going to execute it with a steady eye and confidence not only in the technology, but also in the cast.

I’m a hard guy to please and being a fan of Twitch for years I know its readers have a rabid love for cinema. But I’m the guy who thinks the Jedi should be edited out of Star Wars at the same time the elves and hobbits get scraped away from Lord of the Rings. I found Dr Manhattan’s blue penis hard to swallow and the last cat person I fell in love with was Natassja Kinski. Avatar was never going to work for me. Yet for 150 minutes this evening James Cameron had me in the palm of his hand.

Snigger away. But this is the important part: Next week a kid who hasn’t seen Dances with Wolves is going to sit down wearing a silly pair of spectacles and be blown away. By the time he or she gets to my miserable jaded age, the effects here will look as old fashioned and as dated as anything I choose to rewatch for the umpteenth time in my DVD collection. But I collect those movies for a reason. So right now I’m jealous of that kid and what he or she is going to experience many years from now in the same way I’m jealous of the first kids who got to see King Kong back in 1933.

But if none of that sways you, just buy the ticket for Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang. They steal the show.