Think about Facebook, iPods, iTunes — all things you might use every single day. They all have seeds in the “little program that could,” called Napster. Co-created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in the late 1990s, the file-sharing service/social network was not only ahead of its time technologically and socially, it completely changed how the public consumes media. If it wasn’t for Fanning and Parker, who knows how long it would have taken for corporations to allow you to download music on your computer or rent one of their movies without leaving your house.
All this is at the center of Downloaded, a brand-new documentary by Alex Winter. Winter (seen above with Fanning and Parker) is best known as an actor (Lost Boys, Bill and Ted) but has been directing for some time. With Downloaded, he tackles a massive topic with authority and energy, telling the story of Napster from its earliest moments through its culture peak and long term fallout. It world premieres this week at South by Southwest in Austin and will be released by VH1 Rock Docs. After that, you’ll be able to see it on demand and online.
We spoke to Winter about Downloaded and found out it was a project he’d been developing for long time before it evolved into its current state. He talked about trying to focus such a huge topic, culling together a huge wealth of media and, of course, The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted 3. Read the interview below. Read More »
.
Please Recommend /Film on Facebook
South by Southwest is starting this week and one of the more surprising, and exciting, films playing is the Napster documentary Downloaded, directed by Alex Winter. Yes, the same Alex Winter who starred in The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The movie is an engaging and entertaining tale of a culture milestone and we’ll have a full interview with Winter talking about the film later this week.
But when you’ve got Alex Winter on the phone, you have to ask him the question: “What’s up with Bill and Ted 3?” We know both he and co-star Keanu Reeves are interested and director Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) is attached. But what’s the latest?
Winter explained that while it might feel like there’s some major hold up with the sequel, that’s simply not the case. He and his co-stars just started talking about the project prematurely and it’s still going through its natural development. Read his quotes below. Read More »
Casting, plot details and rumored start dates are all in this edition of Sequel Bits. After the jump read about the following:
- Keanu Reeves lays out the plot of Bill & Ted 3 in a new interview.
- Sasha Barrese will return in The Hangover Part III.
- Yancy Butler is back for Kick-Ass 2 as mother of Red Mist.
- Julie Delpy says a third Before movie is still happen…but not for at least a year.
- Tributes Seeder, Chaff and Gloss have been cast in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Read More »
Posted on Friday, August 10th, 2012 by Angie Han
Maybe when we first heard about the possibility of a third Bill & Ted, it sounded like an outlandish idea. As Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves have continued to offer little updates, however — and as more and more ’80s and ’90s properties have found their way to the big screen — it’s started to seem more and more plausible. And now the project’s taken one more big step forward, with Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) just hired to direct. More details after the jump.
Read More »
Posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 by Angie Han
Everything old is new again in today’s Sequel Bits, which looks to the ’90s, the ’80s, and even the 19th century for inspiration. After the jump:
- Transformers 4 auctions off a walk-on role
- Bill & Ted 3 has a script, but no green light
- Men in Black 3 implores you to share your alien encounters
- Journey 3 gets fast-tracked for 2014
- Michael Bacall’s working on 21 Jump Street 2
Read More »
Posted on Monday, April 25th, 2011 by Angie Han
A year ago, Keanu Reeves said in an interview that he was “trying” to get a third Bill & Ted film made, and we weren’t sure if he was joking. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we were doubtful — it seems like every other popular film from the ’80s and ’90s is getting a reboot, remake, or sequel, so why not Bill & Ted? Over the past year, he and former co-star Alex Winter have mentioned Bill & Ted 3 in various interviews, and now some real progress has been made on the project: According to Winter, the script has now been completed. Read more after the jump.
Read More »
As unlikely sequels go, Bill and Ted 3 always seemed pretty damn unlikely. But last year both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter have talked about the script, and now a draft is almost done. Keanu Reeves recently told MTV that writers are about six weeks from a draft, and that “When we last got together, part of it was that Bill and Ted were supposed to have written the song that saved the world, and it hasn’t happened… So they’ve now become kind of possessed by trying to do that. Then there’s an element of time and they have to go back.” So the film, should it somehow get made, which could itself almost be the plot of a Bill and Ted type movie, would jump right off from the end of the last one. Which was released twenty years ago. There’s some comedy to be mined there — have the two lovable goons been stuck in some sort of time bubble for two decades? I’ll be quietly fascinated to see how this one goes.
After the break, Roberto Orci, who is writing Star Trek 2 with working partner Alex Kurtzman, talked a bit about their approach to the sequel. Read More »
How did a third Bill and Ted movie become the ’80s sequel that keeps coming up? Is there that much nostalgia for the middlebrow comedies of twenty years ago? Evidently so, as Keanu Reeves said during the Toronto Film Festival, “I’d love to play the role, I’d love to work with Alex [Winter] and [writers] Chris and Ed again, and we’ll see what they do.”
And now Alex Winter says that there is indeed an idea in play for a third film, and that a script is underway right now. Read More »
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
