Posted on Monday, February 13th, 2012 by Germain Lussier
It’s a tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme. Guillermo Del Toro is attached to another project. This time he’s upgraded from producer to director of a new version of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast for Warner Bros., which will be written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’ Diary). Read more after the jump.
Posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 by Angie Han
After the critical and commercial successes of Puss in Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2, producer Guillermo del Toro is preparing to team up with DreamWorks Animation once more. Del Toro is slated to exec produce a new animated feature titled Alma, about a little girl drawn into creepy toy store. Though the imagery is plenty sweet — as you can see in the header image, the titular character is just plain adorable — there’s also an underlying spookiness to the premise that could be a great fit for del Toro’s sensibility.
Former Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas is set to helm the movie, which is based on his own short film of the same title, while Sunshine Cleaning writer Megan Holley has been tapped to pen the script. More details after the jump.
Posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 by Angie Han
Game of Thrones helmer Brian Kirk has worked mostly in television, but he’s been making moves toward the big screen in recent months. He was up for the job of directing Thor 2 before Patty Jenkins won the job, and over the summer he signed on for Paper Wings with Tom Cruise. Now he’s landed another intriguing feature — the Guillermo del Toro-produced thriller Midnight Delivery. More details after the jump.
Posted on Friday, September 30th, 2011 by Angie Han
Malin Akerman has signed on to star with Tyler Labine, Lucy Punch, and Daniel Petronijevic in Cottage Country, an dark indie comedy by Canadian director Peter Wellington. Written by Jeremy Boxen (Endgame), the story follows Todd (Labine) as he plans to propose to Cammie (Akerman) at his family cottage. However, Todd’s plans are ruined by the arrival of his slacker brother (Petronijevic) and the brother’s free-spirited girlfriend (Punch).
The film will be Wellington’s first feature since 2003′s Luck. Wellington has been working primarily in television over the last several years, on shows including Rookie Blue and Slings and Arrows. The film is currently shooting in Ontario through late October for a 2012 release. [The Hollywood Reporter]
After the jump, Pacific Rim gets another star and John Hurt joins a project called Labyrinth that is totally unrelated to Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. Bet you got worried there for a second that it would be a remake.
Posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 by Angie Han
As a young director in the mid-’90s, Guillermo del Toro had just completed his first feature, Cronos, when he landed the gig of helming the $30 million sci-fi horror Mimic for Miramax. Though del Toro’s creepy style seemed like an obvious fit for a story about giant killer bugs that prey on humans, the project famously did not go well. Creative struggles with producer Bob Weinstein ultimately resulted in a theatrical cut that del Toro so disliked that he publicly distanced himself from the film.
Now, some fourteen years later, del Toro is finally making peace with Mimic in the form of a new director’s cut that hits Blu-ray today. After the jump, watch a clip from one of the Blu-ray special features in which del Toro discusses his original vision for the movie.
Posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 by Germain Lussier
Note: Superhero Bits will likely be sporadic over the next week because I’m at Fantastic Fest. Please, don’t weep for me.
Want to watch the first clip from Batman: Year One? Why is George R.R. Martin such a big Marvel fan? What does Ron Perlman have to say about the possibility of Hellboy 3? How about Mark Millar about Kick Ass 2 and Kick Ass 3? Does Tom Hardy have any plans post The Dark Knight Rises? Would you like to study the architecture of various superhero lairs? Read about all of this and more in today’s Superhero Bits. Read More »
Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
Now that Nicolas Winding Refn‘s excellent film Drive has been released and you’ve all finally had a chance to see it, there’s no better time to go back to Comic Con, where Drive distributor FilmDistrict presented one of the best Hall H panels to ever hit San Diego. Rather than doing a stock footage presentation and quick talent lineup, FilmDistrict filled the Hall H stage with those responsible for the company’s two genre films, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Drive. So Guillermo del Toro, Ron Perlman, Carey Mulligan, Guy Pearce, Troy Nixey, and Nicolas Winding Refn all sat side by side for an hour.
What transpired was a conversation primarily between Guillermo and Refn, with their talk getting into more gritty filmmaking nuts and bolts than is typical for Comic Con. There is some great conversation about approaches to directing, and Refn gives the best rendition we’ve got of the story of how he came to direct Drive. There’s about an hour of footage below, broken into pieces, and it is all worth a look. Read More »
Posted on Monday, September 12th, 2011 by Russ Fischer
Jessica Chastain seems to be all over the place this fall. She made her debut this summer in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and is on screens now or soon in The Help, The Debt, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, Wilde Salome and Texas Killing Fields. Quite a lineup for an actress that no one could have identified a year or two ago.
She’s still booking new roles, too. One of her most recently announced gigs is Mama, a feature-length expansion of a short film by Andres Muschietti, who wrote and directed the short. And now Chastain will be joined by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones. Guillermo del Toro is producing the film. Read More »
