At last, former Gizmondo head honcho Bo Stefan Eriksson's story is finally going to be told on film -- or rather, the one told in Wired will be. Writer-director Craig Zobel and producer Beau Flynn have optioned the rights to create a movie based on the publication's October 2006 article "Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-up" by Randall Sullivan, which chronicles the build up to his infamous car crash. Flynn's production company Contrafilm will be backing the project, and should the movie actually make it to theaters and be successful, we suspect there'll be plenty of material for a sequel.

[Via Gizmodo]

Read - Film optioned
Read - Original Wired article

While there's been no shortage of fresh Gizmondo rumors over the past year or so, we haven't heard much of anything about former bigwig Stefan Eriksson, who's known as much for a little car crash as he is for the company he helped bring into infamy. That looks to have changed in a big way this week, however, as Herr Eriksson has now landed back in jail in Sweden, where he's facing a whole slew of new, very serious charges, including extortion, aggravated assault, grand theft, embezzlement, and a firearms violation. No word on a new trial date or anything just yet, but it looks like Eriksson won't be resting easy anytime soon, as a district judge has granted a request to keep him in jail pending an investigation.

[Thanks, JC]

The long-rumored resurrection of Gizmondo from the ashes of Stefan Eriksson's bisected Ferrari Enzo is near. Near, that is, if you believe Rich Jenkins, CEO of Media Power, the company behind this rebirth. Jenkins recently showed Swedish journalist Hans Sandberg a box full of pre-production gaming handhelds, all looking suspiciously like old, decidedly post-production units. According to Jenkins the changes are all internal, consisting of new graphics hardware from nVidia and an uprated battery (to be offered as a free upgrade to scorned owners of the original). Pricing is still undetermined but Android is confirmed; owners will have to choose either Google's new hotness or Microsoft's decidedly more tepid Windows CE, but can't have both -- unless they buy two. Release is still set for the end of this year via a "really cool website" hitting the intertubes next month.

Like a fiery car crash across the center divide, we just can't divert our attention from the antics of Gizmondo. Gizmondoforums, the self-described "home of the Gizmondo fanbase" (really, they have enough fans to create a base?) is carrying this quote from Rich Jenkins, who along with Carl Freer co-founded Media Power, the company now in charge of Gizmondo:

"We are excited about the potential of Android and have been working on an Android version of the Giz...Android would be a TERRIFIC addition to the Gizmondo and enable a TON of open source development."

Originally, the Gizmondo 2.0 gaming console was expected said to be WinCE 6-based and scheduled for an end of 2008 release. While this Android talk makes it all a bit more interesting, it certainly doesn't make it any more likely to happen.

Look Pharrell, just because you've Yin'd Stefan Eriksson's crashed Enzo onto your Tee doesn't mean your own Enzo won't get Yang'd. Dietrich is out there, somewhere.

If you were starting to get worried that the new Gizmondo device would never see the light of day, fear not! According to an interview with Carl Freer, the company is hard at work on its next handheld, which he claims will feature a number of improvements on the previous, practically perfect iteration. First up, the new system will be built atop Windows CE 6 (which Freer claims has lots of "new goodies"), utilizes a separate graphics chip, will be an open platform with a readily available SDK, and can grab content form a web portal (Gizmondo.com, likely). Most interesting of all, however, is that Freer says the old Gizmondo units will be returning to store shelves. All of this magic is said to be happening by the end of the year -- though since we're nearly half-way through it, Carl and co. have a pretty small window. This is where the "exciting psychic worlds" come into play, right?

[Thanks, Trevor]

We've been in contact with Hans Sandberg, the Swedish journalist who quoted Carl Freer saying unequivocally, "I'm going to resurrect Gizmondo." This, plus yesterday's teaser, is the source of the Gizmondo mongering lighting up the Intertubes yesterday. Fortunately, all the important bits from Hans' interview are now translated from Swedish into English for some good ol' fashioned global scrutiny. As unthinkable as the proposition might sound, we bring you the highlights for your morning amusement and trepidation:

• Carl believes there is a still a market for Gizmondo and is "ashamed" of his failure -- he hopes the resurrection can pay back early investors
• Florida-based Tiger Telematics will formally own the new Gizmondo
• Gizmondo v2 could be up and running by May 2008 -- by Christmas 2008 we'll see "a more advanced version with widescreen"
• 35 titles will be available at launch, 6 are new, more on the way
• An "easy to use program" will allow kids to create games, save them to SD, and play them on their Gizmondo
• Price: $99, possibly free if Carl can work a deal with a cellular provider
• Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any explanation of the "exciting psychic worlds" in this interview snippet

Our personal favorite has to be this, though. Carl says he has a deal in place with a Chinese company in Shenzhen which will manufacture the device "on credit" on condition that they will be the sole reseller in China. Oh, that sounds like a deal alright.

Update: Plextek, the original Gizmondo device developer, have confirmed to Eurogamer that they will indeed be building the resurrected Gizmondo. Stefan Eriksson is currently not involved, Freer is. You know what this means... Gizmondo lives!

Trevor Michael Karney – aka, The Elusive Dietrich – has been sentenced to jail by an LA judge for misleading police in the 162MPH crash of that $1.5 million Gizmondo Ferrari Enzo. Besides lying to police about his involvement as a passenger, the 27-year old German playboy also fled to Ireland before sneaking back into the US through the Mexican border in search of some tasty bud and cool waves. The sentence? 30 days, which roughly translates to a punishment of tickling by virgins until the onset of bellyache by the time the appeals process is through.

It looks like those trying to round out their collection of handheld video game systems now have a decent chance at picking up one of the more infamous entries in the class relatively cheaply, with a lot of 15 Gizmondo units recently turning up on eBay and bidding not exactly going through the roof. While original games for the handheld are few and far between, you should still be able to put its built-in camera and PMP functions to good use, not to mention load it up with any number of the "homebrew" games available for the system. We wouldn't worry too much if you're not lucky enough to score one this time around though, with these likely only a sign of future cut-rate systems to come.

[Thanks, John W]

As much as we're going to miss covering the entertaining side show that has been the life of Bo Stefan Eriksson for the last nine months, we're relieved that the former Gizmondo Europe director has finally admitted some culpability in this strange saga -- and that he'll soon be forced to leave the country and become someone else's problem. After a Los Angeles jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in Eriksson's grand theft auto case last week -- resulting in a mistrial -- the imaginary friend-loving Swede apparently decided that a retrial coupled with the separate weapons charges would be too much to bear, and ended up receiving a pretty sweet deal from prosecutors. In exchange for pleading guilty to two counts of embezzlement and one count of illegal gun possession, the one-time mobster weaseled his way out of an auto theft charge and ended up receiving a three-year sentence plus three years of probation -- but because of the time he's already served as well as "other allowances," he should be free in about a year. Once he gives up his orange jumpsuit, Eriksson faces immediate deportation from the US, although his lawyer has stated that the now house-less and car-less felon was planning to leave anyway (expect us to be liveblogging his bon voyage party). The only matter that has yet to be settled is how much loot will have to be paid to the British banks who repo'd Eriksson's Mercedes and non-crumpled Ferrari, so after December 7th, ol' Stefan will be lucky to have enough money in his commissary account to afford a package of Twinkies.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

In yet another sign that maybe this whole "trial by jury" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be, jurors in the grand theft auto case against former Gizmondo Europe director and current jailbird Bo Stefan Eriksson were unable to come to a unanimous decision regarding his guilt or, ahem, innocence, resulting in a mistrial. Although ten members of the Los Angeles panel felt that Eriksson did indeed steal a Ferrari and a Mercedes imported from England, two of the jurors apparently bought the defense's rather lame excuse that the one-time mobster only stopped making payments because his sham of a company finally disintegrated. Luckily for fans of justice and fast cars, prosecutors have already stated that they are planning to retry Eriksson for the same crimes, not to mention the weapons charges that the slippery Swede still has hanging over his head. At this point it's not clear why those two jurors chose to remain so steadfast in their convictions, although it's somewhat telling that they were spotted skipping around the courthouse halls after the trial was over, clutching unsold Gizmondos in one hand and hundreds of shares of nearly worthless Xero Mobile stock in the other.

[Via BoingBoing]