It looks like Sam Worthington is going to have another block to bust and another tentpole to erect because he’s the first talent to be tapped for a new, big-screen take on Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future. If you don’t know Dan Dare, then I expect you simply aren’t English. He’s as famous over here as Tintin is, at the very least, but is probably even less well known in the US than that Belgian boy reporter.
Created in 1950, Dare is a comic strip hero that proved more lastingly famous than Eagle, the comic he appeared in, just as Judge Dredd is a bigger brand than 2000AD or Batman than Detective Comics. He’s been compared to Buck Rogers, and I suppose that makes a lot of sense. Can you see Sam Worthington in the role of a proud Brit fighter pilot? To me, it seems like a particularly good fit for him… well, accent aside.
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Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen, The Losers) will star alongside Sam Worthington in The Fields (formerly titled Texas Killing Fields), to be directed by Michael Mann’s daughter Ami Canaan Mann from a screenplay by Donald F. Ferrarone. Morgan will play a detective “transplanted from New York.”
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Warner Bros wants audiences to know that Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans remake is being released in digital 3D so they created the “very subtle” new posters and banners to promote the release. Check out the new “The Clash Begins in 3D” advertising art after the jump. Click on the images to enlarge and see the super high resolution digital photo files. Did I mention that Clash of the Titans is now going to be released in 3D?
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Last year we reported that Danny Boyle’s abandoned project The Texas Killing Fields had got a new lease on life and a couple of attached stars: Sam Worthington and Bradley Cooper. While Cooper’s relationship to the film is currently uncertain, multiple sources are now confirming Worthington’s involvement. Michael Mann will produce the film for his daughter Ami Mann to direct. And it has undergone a title change, too. The film will now go by the shorter but much less descriptive title The Fields. Read More »
We’ve seen a couple trailers for the Louis Leterrier remake of Clash of the Titans, but they’ve been mostly monster and action shots so far, seemingly aimed at those who know the original film. A teaser isn’t meant to give any indication of story, so we’ll give that one a pass, but watch the first full length trailer and you’ll see little that gets across any story besides, “hey, monsters! BIG monsters!” Now there is a new international trailer that takes a moment to get across a few of the plot points that set all those monsters in motion. Read More »
Life Magazine has a fun photoslideshow showing the cast of Avatar on their worldwide publicity tour. I have included a couple of my favorite photos below.
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[Editor's Note: We have published reviews of Avatar by David Chen, Brendon Connelly, and Russ Fischer. Here is a different take on the film from Hunter Stephenson.]
No man is an island, so James Cameron humbly ventured off several years into the future to create one for his own damn self called Pandora. And now he’s inviting the unwashed masses to explore it for a small fee, with permission to return, preferably in the company of an unsuspecting elder skin, if one so chooses. In my mind, the phrase “movie gods” as it applies to mainstream blockbusters had nearly become obsolete. Agree? The exciting, previously unimaginable computer generated wow-factor that Cameron and Steven Spielberg defined with Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park was followed by challengers to the SFX throne that, even at their best, never quite felt as revolutionary and transportive.
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According to Sam Worthington, the Clash of the Titans cast and crew will be reconvening in January to film some more scenes for the film, just a couple of months ahead of its release. What’s more, he’s also saying there’s a chance that the film will be ‘dimensionalised’ into 3D. Is there really time for all this monkeying about?
And why are they doing this? Have Louis Letterier’s cuts been playing badly so far? Worthington says:
There were some creaky parts but they are the parts that we knew were creaky and that we knew were going to be creaky going into it. The studio is also letting us add some gods and scenes.
So, he admits that the shooting is to fix stuff up as well as to add more material, which is refreshingly honest. And what’s this about more gods? That’s a funny one. It’s not like the deities are the marquee names here. Well, not literally - but maybe they might pull in a couple of big name stars to cameo and add a little more bang to the final trailer and TV spots. Sean Connery, maybe? Okay - my tongue’s in my cheek, but I am curious to see who these extra gods are and who ends up playing them. Who do you think could stand alongside Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Danny Huston?
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[Editor's Note: Last week we published David Chen's and Brendon Connelly's reviews of Avatar. Here is a different take on the film from Russ Fischer.]
James Cameron sure can build a world. His obsessive, detail-oriented approach to filmmaking is particularly suited to inventing alternate environments; in another life he might have been a magnificent city planner. Pandora, the world on which his film Avatar takes place, is rich in strange and beautiful detail. It’s a pulp wonderland, the sort of world that would make Robert E. Howard nod in approval. The science fiction of his teen years, the building blocks of early films like Aliens and the hidden sights discovered in his mid-life underwater career are recombined into an environment that becomes more than the sum of its parts.
When Pandora is allowed to take center stage it makes a hell of a subject. Cameron is fully engaged while exploring the planet’s verdant beauty, or, ironically, when blowing it to pieces. But while building his world the designer in James Cameron took precedence over the screenwriter. There’s an argument to be made that a story with roots so deep in pulp adventure doesn’t need to be well-scripted. I can’t get behind such a viewpoint. That a place imagined to the most minute detail should be home to a story so thin is the film’s greatest irony. Read More »
Update: This trailer was online earlier this week, but removed by Warner Bros. The trailer is now officially online.
The freshly escaped second trailer for Louis Letterier’s Clash of the Titans remake packs a whole lot more money shots. Monster money shots, of course, because that’s the real currency here - the beasties. Avatar might just make Sam Worthington into a big star, though it most likely won’t, and if it does, it will probably be the nine foot tall blue version of him that the world falls for. Tough break. And while I might turn out to see a film because it has Gemma Arterton in it, I know I’m in a minority there.
As well as showcasing more monster action, this trailer reveals a lot more of the film’s plotline. Of course, the film is a remake and it’s also all rooted in some familiar myths so you’ll probably be surprised by absolutely none of it.
Check out the trailer after the break.
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