The new version of the HG Wells classic War of the Worlds is gearing up to start shooting on October 15, and the filmmakers have been taking advantage of an act of God to get some nice FX shots for the film: they travelled to Washington state to get footage of real forest fires. Says producer Susan Goforth:”I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. There are just no words to describe the experience of being so close to a curtain of fire rising into the sky and stretching on for miles. Wafts of heat constantly remind you of forces that are greater than our own. [Director] Timothy [Hines] was so excited. He kept moving in closer and closer with the camera. I was very worried as to how far we were pushing those boundaries. I had to keep reminding Timothy that we didn’t want to announce that the principals of the new WAR OF THE WORLDS movie perished while filming forest fires.”

Mars, 2176 AD. Long inhabited by human settlers, the Red Planet has become the dark and dangerous manifest destiny of an over-populated Earth. 640,000 people now live and work at far-flung outposts all over Mars, mining the planet for its abundant natural resources. But one of those mining operations has uncovered a deadly mother lode: a long-dormant Martian civilization whose warriors, now unleashed and apparently unstoppable, are systematically taking over the bodies of human intruders, bent on ridding the planet of the invaders from Earth.