The latest project to fall into the laps of prolific hoarders Amanda Seyfried and McG is a movie based upon Sabrina Rudin Erdely’s Rolling Stone article The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League. I’ve just read the original story to get a handle on what the movie would be about, and in basic terms, it’s this: Esther Reed steals a series of identities, eventually becoming Brooke Henson and getting admitted to Columbia University under false pretenses, not to mention a false identity. Detectives looking for the real Brooke Henson, who was a missing person, track the fake Brooke down but before they can nab her, she hits the road and vanishes. At this point, police detective Jon Campbell takes on the hunt as easily his biggest case to date, and the chase is on.
There’s more than a whiff of Catch Me If You Can about this, I think you’ll agree.
Read More »
Bradley Cooper has pulled out of McG’s next film, a romantic comedy called This Means War. According to EW, Cooper was forced to make the decision due to scheduling conflicts: The July start date for the Fox romcom overlapped with the start of The Hangover 2. Reese Witherspoon is still attached, but not yet officially signed, same with McG. It is possible that this film might completely fall apart again. Fox has had this one for a long time; it was originally intended as a Martin Lawrence film, and a number of directors have been attached over the years.
The movie revolves around two best friends, inseparable since childhood, that fall in love with the same woman (Witherspoon) and go to war against each other. THR says the “ensuing battle escalates to mammoth proportions, with New York City demolished in their wake.”
The Terminator rights sale saga just keeps on going. At the beginning of this week, Sony and Lionsgate were jointly bidding for the rights to the Terminator franchise. They lost out to Pacificor, the hedge fund that had loaned money to Halcyon to buy the Terminator rights in the first place, before calling in the debt which caused the rights to go up for sale.
If you think about that for a second, it looks kinda fishy. Sony and Lionsgate think so. Lawyers for Sony say that their bid was the best one, but that Halcyon and Pacificor had struck a deal last Friday, essentially rigging the sale in favor of the hedge fund. But now there’s a new wrinkle. After some negotiation, Sony and Lionsgate have been given an option to negotiate to produce and distribute the next Terminator film. Read More »
McG’s next film may be his first romantic comedy; the director is in talks to direct a film called This Means War for Fox. We’ve reported on this project very briefly before, but had very little info at the time. McG’s talks suggest that Fox is really pushing the film forward. As we last mentioned, Reese Witherspoon and Bradley Cooper are currently attached, but none of the three are signed. Variety stresses that McG hasn’t yet made a deal.
THR offers a few more plot details, noting that it is a “tale of two best friends, inseparable since childhood, who fall in love with the same woman (Witherspoon). The two men’s bond disintegrates and their ensuing battle escalates to mammoth proportions, with New York City demolished in their wake.”
Fox has had this one for a long time; it was originally intended as a Martin Lawrence film, and a number of directors have been attached over the years. More than anything else, this is probably good news for people who want McG occupied so he can’t become involved with other projects of note.
I usually loathe Top lists.
As the adage says, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. I have been starting to get highway hypnosis with the sameness of a lot of these Best Of lists for films in 2009, so I was emboldened when asked to come up with a Top 10 Trailers list for 2009 as I haven’t seen a lot of people devoting time to stacking which of them they thought performed their duty exceptionally well.
When I cobbled this list together I essentially, and unscientifically, used some of the same criteria that I use every week for my This Week In Trailers column. I wanted to include a wide swath of various genres (foreign, kids, drama, comedy, action) to show representative samples of what can be done within those arenas; thus, a few solid trailers just couldn’t make the cut.
Because these trailers are usually entry points for the films listed below, some of the challenge of this exercise is trying to “unexperience” watching the eventual film and judge these things based on why they moved me to begin with. It was tough separating what I know now versus what I knew then but, as you will see as my #3 choice, they don’t always have to result in great films. Trailers are always trying to separate you with your money or trying to make the best case why they deserve to be experienced so I hope you enjoy the ones I selected below and leave a comment or two for any trailers you think deserve a special mention.
Read More »
The rights to the Terminator franchise are on the block, and the future of the film series is in doubt at the moment. But someone will end up holding the bag sooner or later (or a recapitalized Halcyon will retain them) and at that point another film will go into production. A fifth has been in development, though it hasn’t gone terribly far, given the financial instability of rights holder Halcyon.
Prior to release, Terminator: Salvation was said to be the first film in a new trilogy, and director McG had previously said he wanted to make the additional films. Last night, during the BD-Live commentary on Salvation, McG said he still plans to make those movies. Read More »
When Disney chairman Dick Cook got the boot (or quit) a few weeks back, many guessed that the first high-profile casualty of his exit would be the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. Not likely, as that’s a film that Disney will keep afloat at almost any cost. As it turns out, the first big picture to shut down in the wake of Cook’s exit was another big oceangoing effects film he’d championed. Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, previously to be directed by McG from a Randall Wallace script, is no more. At least for now. Read More »
Tonight in TV news: In a bid to get more live viewers for Fringe, Fox is building up this week’s upcoming Observer-heavy with a large scale viral marketing campaign, dubbed internally as “Observer Week”. The bald-headed character was one of the most intriguing elements of Fringe’s first season, and was notable for appearing “Where’s Waldo” style in the background of many episodes. Fans ate it up, and Fox fed the fire by having the actor appear on the network in other capacities, like this NFL game.
Read More »
That man McG seems to change his story an awful lot. I can’t even unravel all of the threads of argument about the rating for Terminator Salvation (something… about… pizza?) but I do recall that, at various times, it was either fully intentional or fully unintentional that Moon Bloodgood’s infamous breast-baring not be part of the final cut. And how much violence or gore was snipped from the picture to get it into theatres with a tween-friendly rating?
Read More »
Something that I came across a couple weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to post on the site is this wonderful Hack Directors Venn Diagram from MadAtoms. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the selections, or reasonings (for example, attempt at style is counter intuitive to the dictionary definition of “hack”), I do think it’s both clever and funny. I’m not sure why Adam Shankman is getting picked on for not being funny when there are better examples of “Isn’t Funny But Makes Comedies” like Tyler Perry. And it is very fitting that Brett Ratner ended up in the center of the diagram.
