After The Golden Compass failed to crack $70 million at the domestic box office, many industry types and American moviegoers pfffft‘d the notion that the other films in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy would ever be made. However, as Variety notes, the first film, which starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and had a budget of nearly $200 million, is line to be the first film to ever crack $300 million internationally without reaching $100 million domestic. This is an astonishing disconnect, really. Producer Deborah Forte is not only hopeful that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass will be made, she is adamant…
“This was a success as a [...]

No casting news as of yet for King Hippo, but semi-retired boxer Mike Tyson, better known these days for his tribal facial tattoo and a taste for human ear, says that his friend Jamie Foxx will take on his life story in a theatrical biopic…
“I have a movie on the verge of happening, probably in two years from now,” Tyson, 41, said Thursday before giving a speech at the Summit View Youth Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas. “Me and Jamie Foxx are going to do a collaboration. He’s going to play me in my life story. We’ve talked about it many times.”
Some news outlets are expressing doubt over this [...]

“Michael Bay, go direct your 2012 movie over there.”
Update: Emmerich and Kloser’s script was purchased by Sony Pictures, it was announced Thursday. The budget for 2012 is said to be near $200 million.
Roland Emmerich, director of spectacle event films like Independence Day, Godzilla and the upcoming 10,000 B.C., is currently in search of a studio to park his latest film, 2012. Apparently this similarly big budget flick has nothing to do with Michael Bay’s project, 2012: The War For Souls, beyond using the Mayan calendar, which indicates bad things coming our way in four years, as inspiration. The script currently being pitched to studios was written by Emmerich and [...]

Variety is reporting that the filmmakers behind Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a new anti-Darwinism pro-Intelligent Design documentary starring Ben Stein, have stepped up their film’s marketing to coincide with its timely April release (around the same time that Bill Maher’s pro-agnostic doc Religulous opens internationally). Motive Entertainment, the marketing company that helped make The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia box office hits, was recently hired to “spread the [film's] gospel.” Variety’s words.
The “super trailer” below for Stein’s film makes the argument that scientists are being quietly fired and silenced if and when they express religious beliefs and that free speech issues are increasingly relevant to [...]

Word of mouth on Jumper isn’t too positive, but the general consensus is that the premise still kinda rocks. Moreover, the image above is worth a hundred sci-fi strike-outs like Next, and hey, it’s not a remake. But the film, which opened to $38 million over the long weekend, has long been keyed in as the first in a so-trendy trilogy, and now director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Swingers) has discussed a sequel with Collider’s Frosty in a super-caffeinated interview. The possibilities for Jumper 2 would seem boundless, from time travel to extraterrestrial teleporting to career longevity for Rachel Bilson.
“I actually have a ton of ideas for the sequel [...]

One of my favorite films of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival is Morgan Spurlock’s follow-up to his hit 2004 documentary Super Size Me. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden is a documentary on the epic action movie scale. A search for the most wanted man on the planet becomes a nice primer about the middle east and terrorists. Filled with humor and pop culture references, yet packed with insights, Osama is a must see for any voting-age American. An interview we conducted at Sundance with Spurlock will be online hopefully later this week. [read our full review here]
Check out the movie trailer for the film below. I wish [...]

Oh yes, my first Quentin Tarantino post here on the great Slash. Warning: I am not going to get to the point. There are some directors I still cannot wait to interview. Not Tarantino. Like Michael Jordan, a living Bobby Fisher, Gregory Isaacs, J.D. Salinger, the Rza, or my favorite ex gal, I’d rather just buy Tarantino an Irish Car Bomb at a dark bar with a good juke box and not say a word except “On me.” Wait, does that come off a little Linda Fiorentino pervy? What I meant was: I think Tarantino operates on a level beyond brain-picking. I motherf***ing owe Tarantino. I don’t deserve [...]

Exceeding all expectations and boldly showing up Hollywood on how to craft a stunning, historical battleground epic with tasteful violence and, sure, sweeping romance, Mongol was one of my top 10 films of 2007. And while it’s valid to make the argument for those films notoriously left out of the category, Mongol deserves to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. The American critics who are not gushing over it, simply have not seen it and are dismissing for shades of the some reason that many will dismiss it after viewing this trailer: it’s being marketed like 300 meets The Last Samurai meets Hero.
Instead, the soon-to-be signature [...]

I am waiting for the moment when someone in “the city” says something with complete seriousness like, “Yeah, we were going to go to the Yeasayer show, but we ended up seeing the new Tyler Perry.” You know Tyler Perry’s movies are cultural Ebola when white early adopters can’t find a way to post-ironically early adopt them. It’s sort of like when you put a dog’s toy into an umbrella holder slightly too tall for him to consider retrieving it, if the umbrellas were black or something.
Perry’s latest opus, Meet the Browns, opens in March. He’s had worse trailers, I would imagine. The flick stars Angela Bassett as a lady [...]

Morgan Spurlock explains that if there is anything he has learned in over 30 years watching movies, it is that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one man, and one man alone (usually Bruce or Arnold). You see, Spurlock wants to make the world safer for his soon to be born baby and embarks on a mission to find the most wanted man in the world - Osama Bin Laden. Intercut with animated sequences, while using Spurlock’s patented humor, Spurlock’s documentary takes us on an exploration of the social political opinions of the middle eastern natives, and acts as a great primer for most non-news watching Americans.
Where [...]

I liked the last two Harry Potter films more than people who hadn’t read the books. I’ve also noticed that the only people that seemed to like The Da Vinci Code were those who had read the Dan Brown books. Is it because they were hardcore fans with too much time invested, or is it that they could fill in all the wonderful blanks which were cut to take the story to screen?
Chuck Palahniuk is my favorite author, and I’ve been waiting a long time to see  Choke adapted to the big screen (and even longer for my Palahniuk favorite Survivor). Most people know Palahniuk as the author of Fight [...]

I just scored a video clip from Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me follow-up, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden. The video clip features Spurlock visiting a reality based personal protection training center where they teach him how to survive everything from hand grenade attacks to sniper attacks in preparation of his journey to find Osama. Watch the video below.
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Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden premieres at the Sundance Film Festival later today. I’m seeing the film tomorrow and [...]

“You mean, that boy from The Goonies? Yippie-ki-yay!”
Wowzers. Oliver Stone had hinted at making a feature on the life of the current American president when he did press for the Alexander Director’s Cut, but who knew it’d come together this quick? Filming could begin as soon as April for the George W. Bush biopic, brilliantly entitled Bush, which could mean a theatrical release right in time for the next election or inauguration. Of course, a SAG strike would cause delay. Stone says the film won’t be a “polemic”…
“Here, I’m the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man,” Stone told Variety. How did Bush go from an [...]

The buzz for Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? has hit an all time high, as Sundance enters into it’s first weekend.
The viral marketing in Park City has people talking. The Weinstein Co has hired a team to hand out faux milk cartons featuring a Osama MISSING advertisement at venues around the loop. The carton features a photo of Bin Laden and includes vital stats of this world famous terrorist. The carton also features a website (whereisobl.com) and phone number (1-877-OSAMA08), which as of press time, disconnects before you can leave a message. On the opposite side of the cartoon is a Help Morgan Find Osama [...]

Compare the trailer to this December’s Defiance to the trailer for October’s Valkyrie. Both begin with solemn white words on black referencing the evils of Adolf Hitler, but only the former manages to build up the palpable suspense and the grave importance of its character(s)’s mission. That is until a jarring tonal shift occurs at the fifty second mark, right when Defiance’s imagery should have intensified, stopped suddenly and left the audience wanting more. I went from curiosity, to slight intrigue to imagining one of Michael Scott’s feel good office posters. The title doesn’t help. Also, I have no idea what the $50 million budget went towards after watching this.
Directed [...]