Briefly: We pretty much knew this was going to happen, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is no longer in Quentin Tarantino‘s new film Django Unchained. The culprit, as feared, is his feature directorial debut Don Jon’s Addiction. The actor recently told MTV that making his film prevented him from being in Tarantino’s new slavery/revenge ‘Southern’:
No, I’m not going to get to do [Django Unchained]. I’d love to, but it just doesn’t work… I’ve been in touch with Quentin about it, and it was so cool to trust me to do this little part in his movie. I would have loved, loved to have done it. He’s one of my very favorite filmmakers, and he was really supportive of me directing and that meant the world to me.
I think many people would have loved to see him do the part, but the upside is that we get to see what he’ll do as a feature director, and Django Unchained still has a great many other good actors: Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Chistoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Kurt Russell, for starters. JGL’s movie doesn’t have a release date; we’ll see Django Unchained on December 25.
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Rian Johnson‘s never done this before. This, meaning, promote a movie he really can’t talk about with a huge, huge studio backing it. The movie in question is Looper and, from the looks of it, Johnson has finally stepped into the big leagues after two fantastic smaller films. Looper, which will be released September 28, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a present day assassin for the mob of the future. Time travel is real and the mob uses it to send people back in time to be murdered. It’s called being a looper and the perks are fantastic…until the person sent back to kill is the 30-year-older version of yourself played by Bruce Willis.
Johnson seems to have really outdone himself with Looper, crafting a whole new world of time-travel, action sci-fi. In our exclusive one-on-one interview, the writer/director (and frequent /Filmcast guest) talked about how he researched this concept, the contributions (or unfortunately lack there of) of Primer director Shane Caruth, when and where the film might premiere and even one question that prompted the usually candid director to ask me to turn the camera off. Check out the video below. Read More »
Besides the Prometheus trailer, the other highlight of WonderCon on Saturday was the world premiere of the teaser trailer for Rian Johnson‘s highly anticipated sci-fi action film Looper. Featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Wills as the same character, the film explores a world where time travel is possible, but highly illegal. The only people who use it are mobsters who send people back in time 30 years to be killed by assassins called “loopers.” One day a looper (Gordon-Levitt) is faced with the ultimate decision as his future self (Willis) is sent back in time.
The trailer, which might not be online for a few weeks, showed a lot of that, but also high-octane, noir action set in a decidedly gritty, realistic world. This is something more akin to a Christopher Nolan movie than a Rian Johnson movie. Speed-bikes flying through streets, people disappearing and reappearing out of thin air, and the film’s star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, looking radically different in a setting that’s decidedly un-sci-fi. After the jump, get your first glimpse of Levitt in the film and read a bit more about the transformation. Read More »
Posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by Angie Han
Though Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s built up an enviable acting career over the years, between his stabs at short film directing and his launching the collaborative production company hitRecord, it seemed like only a matter of time before he branched out into feature filmmaking. Gordon-Levitt is now slated to do just that, as he gears up to direct his first feature, starring himself and Scarlett Johansson. More details after the jump.
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Posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 by Angie Han
Chuck actress Yvonne Strahovski is in final talks for I, Frankenstein, Stuart Beattie‘s adaptation of the comic book by Kevin Grevioux. Aaron Eckhart leads the cast as Frankenstein’s classic monster, who in the present day goes by Adam and stands between humanity and the supernatural demons who would overtake them.
Bill Nighy was previously announced as being in talks to play the villain, a demon prince determined to unlock the secrets of Frankenstein’s reanimation. Strahovski is negotiating for the female lead, a scientist who’s tricked by the demons into helping them create an undead army. Miranda Otto and Socratis Otto (no relation) also star.
Strahovski recently starred in Killer Elite with Jason Statham, Clive Owen, and Robert De Niro, and will next appear in My Mother’s Curse with Seth Rogen, Barbra Streisand, and Adam Scott. I, Frankenstein is scheduled to begin shooting this winter in Australia. [The Hollywood Reporter]
After the jump, rising star David Oyelowo books yet another high-profile project, and Elle Fanning and Alessandro Nivola try to stop things from exploding.
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One of our most anticipated 2012 releases is Looper, which comes from Brick and The Brothers Bloom director Rian Johnson. The movie shot some time ago, but will not be distributed until next year, and the wait is one I’m not suffering patiently.
Looper is a time travel movie, of sorts. It stars Bruce Willis (in the first still from the film, above) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as two men on opposite ends of a timeline. The central conceit is that there is a society in which time travel exists and is banned. Time-travel tech is still in use, however, as an execution tool: gangsters send targets back in time. When the target lands in the past, specialized hit men, ‘loopers,’ make the kill. But what happens when a target escapes the execution? And what further complications ensue when the target is the future self of the looper meant to pull the trigger?
New reports from a Looper test screening are not going to make the wait any easier. A few high profile web writers caught the film, and their opinion of the film, which was shown in unfinished form, is extremely high. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 by Angie Han
And there you have it, folks. For the past several months we’ve watched as Quentin Tarantino filled seemingly every single role in his Django Unchained except the key character of Django’s wife Broomhilda — but the part remains empty no more. Kerry Washington has landed the female lead in the “Southern-fried spaghetti Western,” in which she’ll star opposite Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and many others. More details after the jump.
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Sony and Columbia have evidently decided that David Koepp‘s bicycle chase thriller Premium Rush is going to do well with a summer audience. The film has been bumped back from January 13, 2012 to August 24, 2012. There’s nothing else on that date right now, possibly because late August is a summer dead zone. But perhaps Koepp’s film can build an audience there.
Premium Rush stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an impetuous bike messenger in New York City who finds himself becoming an object of great attention for the NYPD after he makes a package pickup. Hot on his heels is Michael Shannon as a cop with a violent temper — seeing Shannon chew some scenery is probably the best reason to check out the film. And Jamie Chung plays another daredevil messenger.
If you missed the trailer when we ran it in September, you can hit the jump to check it out now. Read More »
