Producers have been unsuccessfully trying to get The Rockford Files back on television for several years and, at each turn, the show has been shot down. Of course the next logical step is to ignore that and make it into a movie! Universal has signed Rounders screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write a big screen version of the Seventies TV series that starred James Garner as a former con turned down and dirty detective. The new film is being developed as a vehicle for Vince Vaughn, who’ll also produce. Read more below. Read More »
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Now that a bunch of people have seen the summer’s first blockbuster, The Avengers, our eyes wander down the calendar to the summer’s second weekend: May 11. There’s just one wide release that day (likely because studios were still afraid of Marvel’s team up) and it’s Tim Burton‘s Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bohnam Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer. Since the release of the trailer, fan interest has piqued as the film seems to be a return to the Burton of old, a frightening setting filled with weirdness and humor ala Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.
Do Burton and Depp succeed in that aim? Entertainment Weekly senior writer Anthony Breznican has seen the movie and tweeted some thoughts over the weekend. Check out his tweets after the jump. Read More »
Alexander Skarsgard‘s commitment to True Blood has kept him from being the movie star he might eventually become, but he has been seen on the big screen in a couple roles recently, thanks to Lars von Trier (Melancholia) and Rod Lurie (Straw Dogs, shot a couple years back). He’ll be in Peter Berg’s Battleship later this year, and even gets one of the best face-flapping moments in the trailer for that movie.
Now Warner Bros. is looking to the younger Skarsgard to take on a closed-room thriller called Hidden. Read More »
Fingers crossed that the sequel to The Woman in Black, to be called The Woman in Black: Angels of Death, will have an era-appropriate cover of Slayer’s most famous song buried somewhere in the story. (Seems unlikely, but one can hope. I’ll probably have to just be happy with the song’s use in Gremlins 2.)
Here’s what we know about the sequel to the highest-grossing British film of the past 20 years: the story begun in the first film will be continued 40 years later. Jon Crocker is developing the script based on a story by Susan Hill, who also wrote the tale upon which the first film was based. But will Daniel Radcliffe return? Big spoilers follow for those who haven’t seen The Woman in Black. Read More »
Empire has a cover story on Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus, and thanks to that feature we’ve got a batch of new images, and some new info about how Ridley Scott is approaching the rating of the film.
You might remember that, last year at Comic Con, Scott said that he planned to create PG-13 and R-rated cuts of the film, as he does for most of his films, and let the studio decide which to release. He’s still in the middle of that process, and nothing has been submitted to the MPAA as yet. The new statements from Scott (which, given Empire’s lead time, could actually be a couple months old now) indicate that there is still a last decision to be made about the final rating. But he clearly favors the R. Read More »
Director Nicolas Winding Refn and actor Ryan Gosling are in Thailand now shooting their follow-up to the 2011 cult hit Drive. The new film is Only God Forgives, a sort of revenge Western set in Bangkok, with Kristen Scott Thomas playing a villainous matriarch.
We’ve seen one image of Gosling in the film, but it was pretty much just an image of Gosling that could have been sourced from most anywhere – the background is the more interesting bit. (Above.) Now there is a new image of the actor that suggests he really gets his ass handed to him at some point in the film. Read More »
Prior to No Country For Old Men, the greatest success for the Coen Brothers was Fargo, their 1996 film that won Frances McDormand the Oscar for Best Actress and the Coens the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Fargo was an indie sensation that crossed over into mainstream success — so much so that in 1997 there was a plan to turn Fargo into a TV show.
A pilot was shot with Edie Falco in McDormand’s central role of Marge Gunderson. The show never went to series, but the pilot has been around thanks to a 2003 broadcast on Trio’s Brilliant but Cancelled series. (See the opening embedded below.)
Now Fargo might get another shot on TV thanks to FX, which is developing a new pilot based on the film. Read More »
John Carter isn’t the only write-down being talked about right now. While Disney’s recent release is a much bigger financial albatross, with the company being forced to call it a $200m loss, MGM now saying that David Fincher‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which it co-financed, hit below studio expectations and is “a modest loss.”
The studio wanted about 10% better returns on the picture, but the real takeaway here is what this effect this might have on further adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novels. MGM has the option to co-finance the next two films and is interested in doing, so. But it wants “better economics,” which means cheaper films. And that could mean that David Fincher will not direct. Read More »
