I hope you didn’t think that spectacles like the Great Snow White Race of 2011 were going to disappear in 2012. There are multiple incarnations of Beauty and the Beast, Frankenstein and many other tales brewing at studios, all of which want to squeeze some money out of recognizable public domain characters.
Dracula is looking like the next target of attacks on multiple fronts. We just heard that Dracula Year Zero is back from the dead, and the film Harker, which recasts the Bram Stoker character as a member of Scotland Yard, is gearing up. Now Sony has picked up a new Dracula spec script from Jason Keller (Machine Gun Preacher, Mirror, Mirror and a rewrite on The Tomb), with the intent to create a ‘period franchise.’ Read More »
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I bet that with Guillermo del Toro finally directing Pacific Rim, which has been underway for some time, you thought he might not have time to amass other projects. Not so! In addition to films like Pinocchio that the filmmaker has been working on for some time, he’s now producing an animated film based on the traditions and iconography associated with the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Reel FX will back the project, and Jorge R. Gutierrez, co-creator of the Nickelodeon show El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, will direct. Gutierrez and Doug Langdale scripted. Read More »
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 »
