Posted Dec 2nd 2008 5:02PM by Erik Davis
Filed under: RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand
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At the beginning of this past summer, I finally caved and decided to check out
Lost on DVD. A friend of mine had gone on some crazy
Lost binge, watching all four seasons in, like, a week, and afterward the dude was a little dizzy, dirty and distant. So, instead of going the crazy route, I spread the sucker out over five months and just finished up season four last week ... itching for more, of course. With season five debuting in January, and season four arriving on DVD this December 9, series writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse sat down for a roundtable discussion and answered questions about the show.
Collider has a great transcript, and I could spend hours chatting it up with you, but this is a movie blog and we're more comfortable sticking with things that may or may not end up on the big screen. Case in point: What about
Lost? Sure, they've cut a deal to end the series in 2010, but will they surprise us with a finale in theaters? When asked this, Lindelof said, "No. At least not by us. We've always felt that the show should definitively end the same place it started... on television. To bring our characters to some sort of cliffhanger where the audience gets none of the answers that they really care about and then say, "Now give us ten bucks, buy some popcorn and we'll give you the rest!" would pretty much be the worst thing ever."
What do you think? Should
Lost stick to the small screen, or would a theatrical finale be more fitting?
Posted Dec 2nd 2008 1:45PM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Action, Casting, RumorMonger, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Remakes and Sequels
I really loved the first
Speed movie. You had Keanu before he became
Keanu, and Bullock before she became
Sandra Bullock -- it was simply a nice, refreshing on-screen duo featuring two actors we didn't quite know yet and a villain played by one we already loved.
Speed 2: Electric Cruise Ship Boogaloo? Not so much. And even though the sequel wasn't nearly as successful as the first (partly because the story was absurd, and partly because Keanu was replaced by Jason Patric), folks still talked about a third installment in the series -- so much so that
The Guardian even announced last year that
Dennis Hopper had a role in it. Weird, I know, considering the ending of the first flick, but who knows what these Hollywood types have up their sleeves.
Which brings us to today and yet another
Speed 3 rumor. This time,
AICN has received a message from one of their sources that says a scriptment for the sequel is floating around and it reintroduces the Jack Traven character, played by
Keanu Reeves. And yes, the studio would like to talk Reeves back into starring. No word on whether Bullock would play leading lady (what else does she have to do?), but something tells me folks would rather Keanu if they had a choice between the two, hence
Speed 2: Keanu-less Water Park Nightmare.
What say you?
Speed 3 with Keanu? You down for it? And did the film
Crank already give us the best possible
Speed 3 premise?
Posted Dec 2nd 2008 11:30AM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Action, Drama, RumorMonger, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking
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When
Cinematical visited the
set of Sherlock Holmes last month, we certainly wanted to learn a lot more about this much-anticipated film (which we did), but we also wanted to find out once and for all whether the classic Holmes villain Moriarty would make an appearance. Up until this point, Lord Blackwood (
Mark Strong) was the only villain on record, and so far folks behind the scenes have managed to
successfully dodge the big Moriarty question. That is, until now.
Note: Watch for spoilers below ...While we received a number of shady answers (followed by evil smirks) from the cast and crew regarding Moriarty during our set visit,
IGN managed to get someone to talk: Mr. Mark Strong. At the British Independent Film Awards over the weekend, Strong said this about Moriarty's involvement: "Moriarty's in it ... but you don't really see him. I think he's there because if the franchise carries on, there's a possibility that he will appear in a larger guise. But for the purposes of this one and the detective narrative, I'm the guy that Sherlock's after, Lord Blackwood. And he's a cultist/Satanist lord who is the ultimate cad." So he's there, but you don't see him? Hmmm. I guess we'll take that as solid confirmation ... until we find out who's playing him (ahem, Russell Crowe?).
Posted Dec 2nd 2008 9:02AM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Action, RumorMonger, Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Fans of the
Transporter films aren't usually looking for a lot of subtlety and nuance, not unless those are codewords for "butt-kicking" and "car crashes." But
Louis Leterrier, the whimsical Frenchman who directed the
second film and co-directed the
first one, said in 2005 that he had a subtext in mind for
Jason Statham's title character: He was gay.
Chris Lee
writes at the
Los Angeles Times' fanboy blog that three years ago, when
Transporter 2 came out, well, so did Frank Martin. According to Lee, Leterrier pointed to the scene where Frank turns down a romantic advance from Amber Valletta by saying, "It's because of who I am." Leterrier said, "That's him coming out!"
"If you watch the movie and you know he's gay, it becomes so much more fun," Lee quotes Leterrier as saying in 2005. "It's so great -- the first gay action movie hero! ... Action fans in general are pretty homophobic. You see these tough guys who say, '
The Transporter, that's such a great movie!' If they only knew they're really cheering for a new kind of action hero."
Statham didn't pay much attention to his director's comments, telling Lee in 2005, "It's just Lou-Lou trying to be funny. Although he did say, 'In Part 2, you will become the gay icon.'" That part might have come true, as Statham's many shirtless scenes made him popular in certain quarters, even if the character himself wasn't overtly gay.
Continue reading Did You Know 'The Transporter' Was Gay? Well, He Isn't Anymore
Posted Dec 1st 2008 9:02PM by Erik Davis
Filed under: RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
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You'd think there wouldn't be a ton of stuff to catch you post-Turkey blokes up with, but it's the exact opposite. So here's some stuff(ing) and things to skim over today:
-- Folks are going bonkers today over news in
Production Weekly that the much-anticipated (and kinda secretive)
Tron sequel has changed its title to
TRZ in order to trick young kids into thinking MTV has adapted their now-retired TRL for the big screen. Okay, that's not the real reason ... but do we really need to know the real reason?
TRZ? Here's the snippet of plot synopsis they provided: "After being transported into the surreal landscape of a mainframe computer to destroy an intruder, a programmer finds himself allied with the leader of a rebellion against a corrupt cyber-entity." According to Disney, an official title for the
Tron sequel is not set yet.
-- George Miller finally went on the record and told a talk show in Sydney that he's officially off Justice League. He's done. That's it. Over.
Dark Horizons says Miller thinks the film will be recast when (and if) it happens because "the studios seem to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now." We wonder why?
-- According to
Shock, a source tells them
Rob Zombie will indeed return to direct
Halloween 2, the follow-up to his successful (at the box office) reboot of the franchise, titled
Halloween. Additionally, the site claims
Halloween 2 will begin shooting as early as this March.
-- Why do all the Nazi flicks come out during the holidays? And
how do you sell them?
-- Jennifer Hudson's estranged brother-in-law has been arrested for the deaths of the actress/singer's mother, brother and nephew, according to CBS News.
After the jump: First looks at Whip It and Youth in Revolt, more on Chef and a very cool short film contest.Continue reading Stuff and Things: Some Post-Turkey 'Tron' Sequel Hatin'
Posted Dec 1st 2008 12:40PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Action, Drama, Deals, RumorMonger, Scripts, Newsstand, Religious, War
Maybe all roads
do lead to Rome. According to
The Hollywood Reporter and creator
Bruno Heller, there's actually talk of continuing the brilliant HBO series on the big screen to wrap up all the historical loose ends caused by the series' abrupt cancellation. (Something which HBO now thinks was a big mistake. Between that and
passing over Preacher, they're rather low in my esteem right now.)
Heller admits the talk is, at the moment, just talk. "It's moving along. It's not there until it is there. I would love to round that show off." Heller wouldn't discuss movie plot plans, but the next step for
Rome was Augustus Caesar having to deal with a certain carpenter from Judea -- with a twist typical of the series.
Fans of the show will probably weep a little at Heller's unrealized plans -- Lucius Vorenus' off-camera fate wasn't as definite as we might have thought, and we would have gotten a whole season of Egyptian debauchery. "I discovered halfway through writing the second season the show was going to end," Heller said. "The second was going to end with death of Brutus. Third and fourth season would be set in Egypt. Fifth was going to be the rise of the messiah in Palestine. But because we got the heads-up that the second season would be it, I telescoped the third and fourth season into the second one, which accounts for the blazing speed we go through history near the end. There's certainly more than enough history to go around."
A
Rome movie is probably nothing but a dream -- anything more than a whisper, and it will vanish, it is so fragile. But cancellation is no longer a death knell, and while they can't give me back the lost season of Antony and Cleopatra, I'm
always up for more bread and circuses.
Posted Dec 1st 2008 10:40AM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Comedy, RumorMonger, Fandom, Scripts, Remakes and Sequels
I guess when two out of three films in a franchise are an absolute blast to watch, you kinda try to get behind the odds that a fourth installment will fall somewhere in the middle between awesome and please don't let me see that again ... ever. After watching
Beverly Hills Cop 3, I almost filed a police report convinced the filmmakers had committed some sort of crime against humanity. Now, with the next one, you'd think folks would have learned from earlier mistakes. Well, the fact that Brett Ratner is directing hasn't exactly bolstered anticipation -- but maybe the script is good ...
Speaking of,
Latino Review managed to snag a draft of
Beverly Hills Cop 4 (one they claim "the studio loves, but Eddie Murphy is not too keen on"), and they've slapped a C+ grade on it. Based on their description (which includes spoilers, so watch out), the flick looks to be a combination of the original
Beverly Hills Cop and
Hitch, with Axel Foley (Murphy) trying to figure out who killed one of his friends, all while helping his new, fat partner score with some girl he has a crush on. LR says it's a "pretty standard police corruption story", and it feels "like the writers took an Arnold Schwarzenegger script they had lying around and changed the details to make it a
Beverly Hills Cop movie. There's no fun in it."
Good news is the script will probably change before a final product is shoveled into theaters. What do you think a fourth
Beverly Hills Cop movie needs in order to be successful with fans of the series?
Posted Nov 28th 2008 1:32PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, RumorMonger, Scripts, Remakes and Sequels
When
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended its run in 2003, it didn't just fade away. Sunnydale might have been obliterated, but the
Joss Whedon universe was buzzing with the possibility of other spinoffs, television films, and big screen appearances. Over the last five years, that has become increasingly less likely, especially in the wake of the popular comic continuation. So I am sharing the following only in the interest of keeping up on rumors, not because I believe it.
According to
Moviehole, the Herald-Sun Newspaper had a small blurb on
Buffy, which said: "Rumours are circulating in Hollywood that Whedon has a feature-film script based on his hit TV series ready to roll as soon as a studio is prepared to commit." While it's entirely likely that he does have some Buffy scripts floating around, I'd be wonderfully surprised to hear that one is all ready. Besides his busyness with the new television show, there's the comics, and more specifically -- a storyline that has continued beyond the show.
Would Joss somehow pull Angel and LA out of hell and have Buffy round up the Scooby gang? The only scenario I can imagine would be Buffy bringing Angel and LA out of hell. It would be epic enough for the big screen, and be an endeavor that would bring back all of the cast (except Anya... boo hiss!). But that's just a dream, and while this rumor sounds swell and I could go for many more years of live-action Buffy, I ain't buyin' it. Are you?
Posted Nov 28th 2008 12:03PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
Poor Hulk! Batman, Iron Man, even Wolverine get more sequel press than he does. But late last week,
Tim Blake Nelson revealed to
MTV that he had signed for Hulk sequels, with every intention of taking the villainous center stage as The Leader. But like the rest of us, he has no idea whether or not they'll come to be, or whether or not
Edward Norton will return. "It's all good, and I really do hope [the sequel] happens, for all sorts of reasons. But yeah, we did, we had a great time on
Hulk together. I'm eager to do
Hulk 2 if they make it ... I'm signed on to do
Hulk 2 and 3 whether Edward's there or not, so it's not even up to me ... I certainly hope Edward is on the sequel - but that's up to Marvel and Edward."
Meanwhile, over in Avengers land, Robert Downey Jr.
mentioned again that Hulk is going to show up in that crown jewel of superhero flicks. It's a strange place for the green giant to be in, because he's going forward, yet lost in a land of sequel rumor and leading man drama.
It's a question
we've thrown out to
Cinematical readers before, but with all this additional info, where do you want Hulk to go from here? Do you think that he should get his planned trilogy, then land with a thunderclap in
The Avengers? Should they just leave well enough alone with
The Incredible Hulk? And how do you feel about yet another Hulk recast?
My personal take is that if Marvel can't make up with Norton, they should just give up franchising Hulk, and just leave him off the big screen until
The Avengers. Theoretically, you
could have an all-CGI Hulk in that, thereby sidestepping the need to replace Norton. It would be clunky, though, and might "really really suck." Sigh. Why does there have to be so much drama in the world of Marvel? Earth's mightiest heroes should have a much easier time uniting than this.
Posted Nov 28th 2008 10:10AM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Comedy, RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
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Just the other day I was chatting with a friend about movie franchises, and for some reason
Police Academy came up. (Now I remember -- the Arizona Cardinals' running back is named Hightower!) I was of the opinion that we were totally due for a reboot of the entire
Police Academy franchise -- with maybe a passing of the torch sort of thing between some old cast members and new ones. They could update it, modernize it -- maybe throw in a few young, fresh names (I could totally see Jay Baruchel starring in a role) and have some fun.
Cut to today:
The Sun had a chat with
Steve Guttenberg recently, and it looks like a new
Police Academy flick is totally in the works. He says, "We are doing a new movie and it is going to be great fun. A script is being written and so far it is really great, everyone from the original movies who is still around will return." Guttenberg also said that both
Kim Cattrall (
Police Academy) and
Sharon Stone (
Police Academy 4) have been asked to return, but neither has "said yes yet." I'm a big fan of the series (or most of it, at least), and so hopefully they've got something tasty cookin' in the oven.
For Guttenberg, however, one sequel just ain't enough. He notes, "Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and I are looking to make another
Three Men And A Baby movie. It's called
Three Men and A Bride. The script is pretty much written and we are really keen to get that made. We're very hopeful." Hey, more power to them ... although, in 2009 (or 2010, 2011), I'm not sure how well a film starring Ted Danson, Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg would do at the box office? Iffy on that one. You?
[Thanks Jim]
Posted Nov 28th 2008 9:02AM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, RumorMonger, Fandom, 20th Century Fox, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
Every bit of
X-Men Origins: Wolverine news erodes my dignity a little bit more. Okay, I don't actually have any dignity ... but I really should be more patient before posting. Just a few days ago, I wound myself up over Jeff Katz's "last time I talked to
Hugh Jackman, this is
the Wolverine sequel he wanted" quote.
And now, Jackman himself sat down with
MTV and confirmed that he really would love to take Wolverine to Japan. "The most intriguing thing to me was the Japan story. I love the Japan story. I wanted to do the Japan story from around
X-Men 2. Can you just picture Wolverine in Japan with the triads and the samurai? It's just genius."
Now, I used to mock Wolverine's Japan adventures as being a way to cash in on
Karate Kid fever (mostly to annoy other comic devotees), but Frank Miller's vision of him as a ronin
is genius. With a single book (which you need to read if you haven't already), Miller and Chris Claremont deepened Wolverine from a beer guzzling thug to the poetic badass we all know and love today. Of course, now every
Wolverine comic writer gives him a doomed Japanese bride, but there
was a time when it was novel, romantic, and tragic.
So, why didn't Jackman & Co. do that story instead of the mutant extravaganza that
Origin is rumored to be? "How can you do that before you explain his origins? If we tried to mix the origin and Japan together, it wouldn't do justice to either. So you can tell by the answer where I'd like it to go." Darn you, Jackman. You're right, of course, but this just means I have to wait
that much longer, and hope that
Wolverine is good enough for it to happen.
Oh, and check out yet another new
Empire photo after the jump. Looks like he fills out his jeans as nicely as his tanktops.
Continue reading Hugh Jackman DOES Want Wolverine in Japan!
Posted Nov 26th 2008 1:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Casting, Sundance, RumorMonger
One of the big questions that has plagued cutie funny guy
Michael Cera is whether he'll be able to find a career outside of his bumbling, awkward, mild-mannered roles. While that question is currently left unanswered, we
will get to see if the guy on the screen is the same guy backstage.
The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's part of a "semi-secret" project called
Paper Hearts. Why semi-secret? This sucker, which is being described as part-documentary and part-scripted comedy, has already been made and will debut soon at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It seems this new film will follow his real-life relationship with
Charlyne Yi (the stoner girl from
Knocked Up, who you can see above), and like his recent
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, be greatly influenced by music.
I can't imagine how they'll meld the real and the fictional, but it should make for an interesting experiment. Will this secrecy pay off and help
Paper Hearts explode during its debut in Park City? Or will it succumb to the woes of other struggling indie films? Stay tuned!
Posted Nov 26th 2008 10:02AM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, RumorMonger, Fandom, Scripts, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
Robert Downey Jr. is, quite simply, a god of geekdom. If there's a holy trinity, he shares it only with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman because it is so rare that actors just
get it, and even rarer that they'll say it. Witness Downey's thoughts on
The Avengers to
MTV: "If we don't get it right it's really, really going to suck. It has to be the crowning blow of Marvel's best and brightest because it's the hardest thing to get right. It's tough to spin all the plates for one of these characters."
He also may have let slip who The Avengers might be battling in his concerns that Iron Man remain in a real-world setting: "The danger you run with colliding all these worlds is that Jon was very certain that
Iron Man should be set in a very realistic way. Nothing that happened in
Iron Man is really outside the realm of possibility. Once you start talking about Valhalla and supersized super soldiers and jolly green giants, it warrants much further discussion." This could mean
Giant Man, or Captain America could be looming big in Downey's thoughts.
Continue reading Robert Downey Jr. Warns 'The Avengers', Talks 'Iron Man 2'
Posted Nov 25th 2008 5:40PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Action, RumorMonger, Fandom, 20th Century Fox, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
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Former Fox executive Jeff Katz is praising
X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the heavens -- or at least to
MTV's Splash Page. He thinks Wolverine's solo movie will be his finest hour (or two) yet, and insists that everyone involved has a perfect grasp on the character.
"To me and [Hugh] Jackman, our mantra for Wolverine has really been one term: 'bad-ass.' As long as Wolverine is consistently bad-ass, people are generally going to go with you. That's what they want from that character.
Iron Man comes out and it does a tremendous business,
Batman comes out and it does a tremendous business, and the inclination in the movie biz a lot of the time is, 'Well, that thing just worked, so we have to chase that. But as comics people know, Batman is not Iron Man is not Superman is not Wolverine - they're all different."
Call me infatuated, but I don't doubt Jackman's take on the character, and I fervently hope all claims of darkness, grit, and violence come to pass. My concern has always been how many mutants they crammed into a Wolverine film that are, as Katz puts it, "fanboy friendly" and poised for sequels of their own. Deadpool is one thing, but Gambit and Emma Frost are another.
What
does wind me up, though, are the possible plans Katz was privy to for future Wolverine films. "I can't speak to what's been discussed in the interim since I've been gone, but Mr. Jackman certainly has a desire to go to Japan." And with that, Mr. Jackman, you just became my favorite person in geekdom. Let's get together sometime and talk
a certain Frank Miller book, just for laughs.
Look for the first
X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer in front of
The Day the Earth Stood Still in theaters December 12.
Posted Nov 25th 2008 3:25PM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Casting, Deals, RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand
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It's always fun when some tasty bit of news gets tossed out online, especially when there's only a few tiny little pieces -- like a director, an actor and a title. That seems to be the case with this piece of news, via
Production Weekly, who tell us that Sony has picked up the rights for a film called
Chef, which will be directed by
David Fincher and star
Keanu Reeves. That's it. That's all we have to go by. No genre, no premise, no additional cast -- nada.
As far as Fincher and Reeves go, each appears to be available as the former is finished with
Benjamin Button and is attached to only direct an animated segment of
Heavy Metal, and Reeves just finished
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. The only flick that comes to my mind is the remake of
Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, but the titles are different and it doesn't seem like the kind of project Fincher would direct. So who is this chef? Where does he come from? Tell us more about this movie! If anyone out there has more info on it, definitely let us know.
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