Public Enemies - What Did You Think?
Resident Evil 4 Confirmed, Shooting Later This Year?
Posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Shock Till You Drop has some exclusive bad news: Screen Gems and Sony are racing to get another Resident Evil film in the can for release on September 17, 2010. Given the end of the third film, participation of Milla Jovovich is likely, and we know that Paul W.S. Anderson (director of the first film, writer and producer of all three previous movies) is writing this one, and will likely produce but not direct. What more is there to say? A little bit, actually, and it’s after the jump. Read More »
The full theatrical trailer for the animated 3D film Planet 51 has appeared at Yahoo. The film is about a human astronaut (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) who lands on an alien planet, only to discover that it looks exactly like Earth. Sure, the denizens are green aliens, but otherwise they’re just like us…and not too happy to have an alien invader in their midst. Gary Oldman, Jessica Biel, Justin Long and John Cleese are also in the voice cast. Joe Stillman (Shrek and Shrek 2, the upcoming Gulliver’s Travels) is credited with the script and Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinezare co-directed. See the trailer after the jump. Read More »
Maybe The Last Moneyball Update For A While: Soderbergh Is Off The Project, MLB Approval Still Pending
Posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Time to back away from Moneyball for a while: the New York Times reports that Steven Soderbergh is totally off the project, only hours after the LA Times published an interview with Sony head Amy Pascal, who reiterated the studio’s reasons for bailing on the project. And both the Times and Movieline talked to Major League Baseball (MLB), which has been in the process of negotiating with Sony to approve the use of official logos and team names. The whole convoluted story is after the jump. Read More »
George Clooney Packs Up His Warner Bros. Office, Moves To Sony
Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Nikki Finke is reporting an interesting bit of news: George Clooney and Grant Heslov are ending their production partnership with Warner Bros. and heading across town to set up shop with Sony. Coming just a week after Sony famously shitcanned Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball, this is a surprising move. At Warner Bros. Clooney was able to make the less commercial movies he’s favored over the last few years, while Sony isn’t exactly known for being a hotbed of artistic aspiration. Read More »
Kyle Ward To Write Sony’s Uncharted Game Adaptation and Hitman 2
Posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
For quite some time, Sony has quietly been working to develop a film based on the PlayStation 3 game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Now with the game’s sequel getting great press in the wake of E3 (and thanks in part to a fun multiplayer beta) Sony has dropped word that the movie is actually happening. Kyle Ward has been hired to pen the script, which makes his second video game-related announcement in two days (He’s also scripting Hitman 2). Read More »
Warner Brothers, Paramount Pass On Soderbergh’s Moneyball
Posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Over the weekend, the biggest news in Hollywood was that Sony chief Amy Pascal had put the brakes on Steven Soderbergh’s baseball stats movie Moneyball, which had been set to begin shooting yesterday with Brad Pitt in the lead. Soderbergh was given the option to shop the movie to other studios over the weekend — ‘limited turnaround’ was the phrase used — and now thanks to the LA Times, we know that Warner Brothers and Paramount both passed. What it means for the movie, after the jump. Read More »
Tenacious D Have Written A Song For New Heavy Metal Movie
Posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Buried in a video interview with MTV, Jack Black mentions that he and Kyle Gass, aka Tenacious D, have written a song for the new Heavy Metal movie. Which doesn’t mean that we’ll ever hear it, because the project could be perennially stuck in development hell, but the very idea of having a song in the film by the ‘D is great. Black also mentions that he’s working on a musical comedy with producer JJ Abrams. Read More »
Will Uncle Ben’s Original Killer Return For Spider-Man 4?
Posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
It’s a slow news day so I thought I’d write about one of the rumors that hit over the weekend that we didn’t write about. A scooper wrote in to ComingSoon claiming that actor Michael Papajohn revealed during a Wizard World Philadelphia Q&A that he would be reprising his role as the original carjacker who killed Uncle Ben in Spider-Man 4.
If true, this leaves a few possibilities: He could return to film a flashback sequence that would reveal more about Uncle Ben’s death, or somehow reveal that Flint Marko wasn’t actually the killer. Anyone who has seen the first Spider-Man film knows that Peter Parker chases him into a warehouse, where the killer trips and falls from a window to his death. Could he still somehow be alive? Last we heard, Sam Raimi was still waiting for David Lindsay-Abaire to finish the script, and usually supporting roles aren’t cast until a more definite storyline is in hand. Maybe he could return to become a full fledged super-powered villain? What do you guys think?
Movie Review: Year One Is A Lifeless, Laughless Throwback
Posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
In the wickedly underrated David Wain comedy Wet Hot American Summer, there is a sequence where Michael Showalter, in character as a stand-up comic geezer, entertains a bunch of kids at camp with awful jokes about the Stone Age. The joke isn’t his routine, but that the kids are laughing at these terrible, stale caveman gags. Thinking along those lines, I’d be happier (though unconvinced) if Harold Ramis argued that his new movie Year One was a full-length meta comedy about terrible jokes, though I know it’s just a bad, ramshackle movie that assumes its audience is comprised primarily of children. Read More »
Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has made a habit of running from what scares him. Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) doesn’t have fears. If he did, he’d kick their ever-living ass. In a world overrun by zombies, these two are perfectly evolved survivors. But now, they’re about to stare down the most terrifying prospect of all: each other.
I’ve been calling this a “buddy zombie action comedy” but its more than that. But why try to describe it when the trailer does a great job of presenting the strange comic tone of the film. The screenplay has a lot of clever cutaway shots like “the Zombie kill of the week.” And did I mention that some of the movie takes place in an amusement park? Just imagine all the fun that can be had killing zombies on and around amusement rides… I’ve seen some very cool things while I was on set (but I can’t say anymore until the embargo is lifted next month). Watch the trailer after the jump, and leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Sony Pictures has released the first full trailer for 2012, the next big disaster film from Roland Emmerich, the director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla.
Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors. Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton and Oliver Platt.
To be honest, I had kinda gotten tired of the disaster movie genre as a whole, and wasn’t really looking forward to 2012 at all. But judging from this trailer, 2012 looks like it could be the first fun disaster film we’ve seen in a long while. Some of the effects-infused scenes just look incredible. I don’t think I’ve been this excited about seeing a disaster film since first witnessing the alien ship blow up the White House in the Independence Day teaser during the Superbowl. Watch the trailer after the jump (we’ve also included the international trailer which features a few different shots) and leave your thoughts in the comments below. What do you think?
Read More »
Rumor: Michael Sheen in Talks to Appear as Blofeld in Bond 23
Posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 by Russ Fischer
Classic James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld was supposedly killed in For Your Eyes Only. Or, at least, we last saw him plunging to what would be a demise for most people. But this is Bond, so nothing is writ in stone (as evidenced by the fact that Blofeld later appeared in the non-canonical Never Say Never Again). Now, The Guardian says that actor Michael Sheen is in talks to appear in the next Bond film as Blofeld. No great surprise that Sheen might appear in the film, as Peter Morgan was just hired to co-write. Sheen and Morgan have worked together several times in the past: in Frost/Nixon, The Queen and The Damned United. If he’s going to appear in this Bond film, why not use the chance to bring back Blofeld, one of the most classic screen villains? Read More »
