J.J. Abrams has big plans for Star Wars. Very big plans, reaching beyond a new trilogy of films focusing on the multi-billion-dollar franchise. We’re talking TV shows, spin-offs, online components, theme park rides, you name it. It’s a plan Abrams had several years ago for another property, Star Trek. He wasn’t able to make it work with the Enterprise crew, because the rights to Star Trek are split between Paramount, which controls the movies, and CBS, which controls the TV shows and product licensing.
The Wrap has a fascinating article detailing these issues. The core idea is that CBS’ and Paramount’s differing viewpoints on the franchise might have frustrated Abrams to a point where, when Star Wars became available, he decided to shift his allegiance and master plan over to the dark side at Disney. Read More »
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The great thing about the sixth Fast and Furious movie is it doesn’t take itself too seriously. In a way, it’s almost a big-budget spoof of the rest of the franchise, giving fans a bare bones plot filled with the action and excitement they crave.
Leave it to the filmmakers behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, Meet the Spartans and the upcoming The Starving Games to take it even further. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are writing and directing Superfast!, a spoof movie based on the Fast and Furious franchise and similar high-octane action movies. Read More »
Sometimes its easy to forget just how ubiquitous producer Brian Grazer is. Not only does he work hand in hand with Oscar-winning director Ron Howard on some of the biggest movies out there, he also shepherded a ton of well-known television shows. After some years off the air, two of his more famous shows, Arrested Development and 24, will soon be returning in new ways. Now a third might do the same.
In a new interview, Grazer confirmed he’s “absolutely moving forward” with the movie version of the NBC drama Friday Night Lights, and they might turn to crowd-funding, ala Veronica Mars, to prove the fans want the series to return. Read More »
In a post-apocalyptic world, one girl believes she’s the last human alive. Then she sees some smoke on the horizon, and a man appears. She and the man fall in love, assuming they’re all that’s left. Then another man emerges. That’s the plot of Robert C. O’Brien‘s ’70s sci-fi novel, Z For Zachariah, which is about to get the big screen treatment.
Directed by Craig Zobel (of the amazing Compliance), produced by Tobey Maguire and adapted by Nissar Modi, Amanda Seyfried will play the young girl, Chiwetel Ejiofor the man she falls in love with and Chris Pine the mysterious stranger. Filming should occur later this Summer. Read More »
With Johnny Depp‘s schedule quickly filling up and a Summer 2015 release date already locked in, Disney is feeling the pressure to hire a director for Pirates of the Caribbean 5. Rob Marshall, who directed the last film, was rumored to return but he’s already working on Into The Woods. That leaves the door open for someone new.
Deadline reports Disney will make a decision very soon and have narrowed it down to three choices, all of which are very pretty unconventional. They are Fredrik Bond (The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman), the team of Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (Kon-Tiki) and Rupert Sanders (Snow White And the Huntsman). Read More »
After the success of the Lord of the Rings films, The Hobbit and now Game of Thrones, Warner Bros. is looking to kick off another major fantasy franchise. They’ve just purchased the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, the incredibly famous tabletop role playing game in which players create characters and go on adventures through mystical worlds.
Screenwriter David Leslie Johnson is writing the film based on his own script, Chainmail, which was itself based on a fantasy game that predated D&D. Now that Warner Bros. owns the rights to the more popular brand though, Leslie Johnson is retrofitting his script to fit that game. One of this film’s producers, Courtney Soloman, actually directed a D&D film released by New Line 13 years ago. (There have also been two direct-to-DVD sequels.) That 2000 release was a financial and critical disaster, but WB is going to try again. Read More »
Two of the most anticipated sequels in history will reportedly start filming around the same time. Star Wars Episode VII and Avatar 2 will each begin production early in 2014, according to the producer of one project and star of the other. Bryan Burk, the long-time producer for J.J. Abrams and co-founder of Bad Robot, suggested the window for Star Wars. Zoe Saldana, the star of James Cameron‘s Avatar, mentioned the shooting schedule for Avatar 2. Saldana, who’ll next shoot Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, also confirmed what we’ve already known, that both Avatar 2 and 3 will shoot back to back. Read their quotes below. Read More »
A company called YouGov recently conducted a survey discussing public reaction to movie trailers and the impact they have on movie going habits. The study’s major finding is that 49% of people polled felt that trailers gave away too many of a movie’s “best scenes.” In comparison, only 32% of people thought they gave away the movie’s plot.
However, out of those same people, only 19% said it made them not want to see the movie. In fact, 24% of the people said it made them want to see it more. The other 57%, said it didn’t matter or they didn’t know.
Read some more results from the survey, and see the whole thing for yourself, after the jump. Read More »
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