Posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 by Angie Han
Technically, I guess the PG-13 Grown Ups doesn’t really qualify as a kids’ film, so its sequel probably won’t either. But since that movie centered around five grown men acting like children, I’ll say that that this Sequel Bits is all about the young’uns. After the jump:
- Jessica Chastain and Bryan Cranston somehow cram Madagascar 3 into their very, very busy schedules
- Steven Spielberg talks The Adventures of Tintin 2 and 3
- To the surprise of no one, Antonio Banderas would like to do a Puss in Boots 2
- Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 gets a summer 2013 release date
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Yesterday we showed you the poster for West of Memphis, the West Memphis Three documentary produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and directed by Amy Berg. At the time I wondered what new ground this doc would find when the story has been so thoroughly covered by Joel Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost films.
Now there is a lively trailer for West of Memphis, which will premiere at Sundance. The trailer shows a bit of the specific approach the film takes to telling the story of the West Memphis Three and the murder trial that swirled around them. The movie is part of an effort to exonerate the trio and find the real killer of three young boys who were murdered in 1993. Read More »
When the West Memphis Three (Jason Baldwin, Jesse Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols) were freed last year, we learned that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh had been paying for investigations into the case for which the three were convicted. The murders for which the WM3 went to prison are widely believed to have been committed by other parties, and Jackson and Walsh bankrolled DNA tests and other efforts to find the real perpetrators.
Around the same time, in 2008, they started producing a documentary called West of Memphis, directed by Amy Berg, about their investigation and its findings. That film was announced in December, and will premiere soon at Sundance. Jackson has now shared the first poster for the film, designed by the artist Jock. Read More »
Posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2011 by Angie Han
J.R.R. Tolkien fans already got a nice holiday gift earlier this week when the gorgeous first trailer for The Hobbit was released on Tuesday, but Peter Jackson wasn’t done playing Santa. The director took to his Facebook wall a couple of days ago to promise an additional “Christmas treat” to mark the ten-year anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as well as promote the two Hobbit films, and finally revealed his big surprise — the fifth production video from the set of The Hobbit — earlier today. (Which I think technically makes it a Festivus present rather than a Christmas one, but we’ll let that slide.) Watch the video after the jump.
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Ten years ago this week The Fellowship of the Ring was released. Peter Jackson‘s first Tolkien adaption silenced a great many naysayers who said J.R.R. Tolkien‘s novels could never be properly translated to film. It also fostered a mainstream interest in fantasy movies that continues a decade later.
The development of a film based on Tolkien’s original Middle-Earth novel, The Hobbit, was the subject of speculation as soon as Jackson started work on The Lord of the Rings. Actually making the movie was a terrifically complicated process that involved rights deals, the financial solvency of MGM, a long period of development under original director Guillermo del Toro, and the eventual return of Peter Jackson to the director’s chair.
Now the first teaser trailer — a long teaser, at that — has been released for the first of two films based on the novel. Get the first look at footage from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, after the break. Read More »
What has caught the eye of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman)? It’s like he’s staring over my shoulder at some approaching wonder. It’s probably not footage from the movie in which he stars, and perhaps we’ll find out what he sees when that footage is unveiled. In fact, we’ll see the first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey tonight at 10pm EST / 7pm PST, and I’m very much looking forward to Peter Jackson‘s return to Middle-Earth. While you wait, check out the full image below. Read More »
Like many things these days, it all began with a teaser trailer. The day was April 7, 2000 and New Line Cinema released a 100 second trailer teasing The Lord of the Rings, an epic series of films they had in production based on the famous books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Directed by Peter Jackson, a guy who, at that point, had only done five small movies, this one trailer lit a spark that changed the face of modern movies.
At that point, I’d never read the books but the kind of epic action that was being portrayed in the trailer was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I immediately shot over to Amazon, order the whole trilogy, and devoured the series with delight. The fact that these movies were being made was amazing and my anticipation was beyond fever pitch.
It all let up to ten years ago today, December 19, 2001, when dream became a reality and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released in theaters nationwide. It opened to about $75 million over its first five days, eventually grossed $315 million domestic, $871 million internationally, garnered 13 Oscar nominations – including best picture – and won four. Audiences knew we’d seen something epic, new and amazing but we had no idea where the journey would take us and is still taking us today. Read More »
As most of you probably know, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson‘s The Adventures of Tintin, which will be released next week, was originally called The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Though the subtitle was dropped and the film pulls from several stories, that’s the primary Herge book this first film is based on. The legendary author published about two dozen Tintin books in total but, instead of starting with the first one, Spielberg and Jackson opted to jump into the middle (Unicorn was the 11th book) because it introduced a very popular sidekick character in Captain Haddock.
Since they didn’t lock themselves into a specific time in the Tintin mythology, there’s been much discussion about which story the potential sequel, directed by Jackson and produced by Spielberg, would follow. The main rumor was Prisoners of the Sun, but that was reportedly pushed to a possible third movie. Not the case says producer Kathleen Kennedy.
In a new interview, she says while a screenplay for a sequel is currently being written by Anthony Horowitz, Prisoners of the Sun won’t be the basis of the second or third film. The sequel may, however, center on The Calculus Affair. Read more below. Read More »
