Awww!! Looks like they are going to take liberties with the artwork. There's only one of the plethora of craft that looks like the "originals" did, and what the hell is that purple thing?
Something blown up shouldn't make you go wow. Its something you should fear as an unstoppable destructive force. Your house blows up... wowww... thats purty.,=
AFAIK the original recordings and cast will be used, I may be wrong but i'm sure I read it somwhere that this is the case, i'm also really looking forward to the SACD 5.1 remix of the album
As for rights issues, here is a snip from one of the articles I linked to in a previous post.
Looks a bit that way, but seeing as Jeff Wayne owns the merchandising rights, why would he sell one toy martian when you can collect the whole "family"? From what I remember from the book, apart from the main fighting machine there were only a couple of other machines sent to Earth such as the handling machine and another which was used in the pit which was unmanned (or should that be unmartianed). There was also a flying machine too, but apart from that the others are a mystery, and yes I said the same thing about the purple one too
Well the Jeff Wayne version is still in the pipeline but he has recently announced that the movie won't be completed and released until 2007. The rest of the project, including a 5.1 version of the album will be out next year.