Update: Variety has a new report on this financing deal which changes the equation. In short, it says the funds from Worldview are gap financing, which is not at all what was reported earlier. To sum up, the production is doing foreign rights sales in Cannes, which we knew, and which Braff had disclosed weeks ago. Traditional loans against those sales may not come in fast enough to get the production going on schedule. So Worldview is, in essence, loaning that money to the production now so that it can move forward.
Producer Stacy Sher says “Worldview may end up providing nothing at the end of the day beyond the gap loan depending on how we do in Cannes.”
If Variety is accurate, then any assumptions made about “full financing” from Worldview could be quite wrong, as would be conclusions (such as mine) drawn from previous reports. (Zach Braff later updated his Kickstarter page with the same information, which we’ll take as accurate.) Our original article follows, and we’ll update as calls are returned or other info comes in.
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Dave, Devindra, and Laremy chat about the improvements in VHS 2, the inanity of ATM, the backlash against the Zach Braff Kickstarter. You can buy Laremy’s book, Film Critic, at Amazon, or read up on the differences between Pain & Gain and real life.
You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993.
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Posted on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 by Angie Han
Creators of brilliant-but-cancelled TV series aren’t the only ones who’ve been inspired by Veronica Mars‘ Kickstarter success. Zach Braff has taken note, and now he’s taking a similar route to fund his next movie.
Braff made quite a splash with his 2004 feature directing debut Garden State, but as he explains it, the difficulty of finding financing has kept him from making a follow-up. Until now, that is, with your help. Wish I Was Here is designed as “not a sequel in story, but a continuation of the tone” of Garden State, centering on a 30something struggling actor instead of a 20something one. Watch his pitch video, which features appearances from Donald Faison, Jim Parsons, and Chris Hardwick, after the jump.
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Sam Raimi was faced with a predicament. Two of the characters in his upcoming film Oz The Great and Powerful are completely fantastical (a flying talking monkey and a foot tall talking/walking breakable china ceramic doll) but he didn’t want to have the characters to be completely created and performed in post production, and he also didn’t want to use performance capture as it sometimes results in very robotic-looking performances.
Trust me, you will be amazed at the computer generated performances in this film. How did Raimi and team pull it off? Find out after the jump.
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In October 2011, I got to visit the wonderful world of Oz and watch director Sam Raimi direct his preboot (prequel/reboot) of the classic L. Frank Baum book series. I learned much on the set of Oz: The Great and Powerful. Most fascinating to me was some of the things Disney had to do satisfy legal concerns over possibly violating copyrighted imagery from the classic 1939 film adaptation, owned by Warner Bros.
And while trailers for the film focus on wholly computer-generated worlds and characters, you might be shocked to learn the lengths that Sam Raimi went through to shoot a lot of the film practically. For example, it was interesting to see Raimi inventing new practical solutions to help the supporting actors create and react to live performances for characters who would eventually be created in CG — and I’m not talking about performance capture.
After the jump you can watch a video blog we recorded talking about the visit, followed by many more things I learned while on the set.
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Posted on Friday, October 26th, 2012 by Angie Han
Today’s TV Bits is all great news if you like Garden State, or just mostly great news if you don’t. After the jump:
- Oz and Willow will reunite on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother
- Arrested Development adds Andy Richter and Conan O’Brien
- Zach Braff develops the Garden State-esque Garage Bar for ABC
- Steve Carell produces a sitcom for Daily Show‘s Jason Jones
- Greg Daniels and Kevin from The Office team for ABC comedy
- Ted Danson spills plot details on the Bored to Death movie
- Check out photos of Mad Men‘s Don and Megan chilling in Hawaii
- See a trailer for The Carrie Diaries, the CW’s Sex and the City prequel
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Briefly: The latest addition to Sam Raimi‘s soon-to-shoot Oz: The Great and Powerful is a slightly unexpected one. Zach Braff is finishing up his negotiations to join the film. He’ll play Frank, “the loyal but under-appreciated assistant to Oz (James Franco).” Oz is transported to the land of Oz (some name confusion there) when his hot-air balloon is blown off-course; we can expect that Frank is dutifully manning the fire, and probably gets the blame for the course mismanagement that lands Oz in Oz.
The cast also features Mila Kunis as the witch Theodora, and Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz are finalizing talks to play her two sisters Glinda and Evanora. Joey King will play China Girl, to whom Oz becomes a sort of surrogate father after her family is wiped out by Evanora. Oz: The Great and Powerful starts shooting in Michigan in July; it is scheduled for release on March 8, 2013. [Deadline]
Zach Braff earned a big following with Scrubs and had one of the bigger breakout indie hits of the past decade when he wrote, directed and starred in Garden State. Now he’s starring in a smaller new film, The High Cost of Living, which is hitting VOD this week before getting a limited theatrical release. The movie has got some good notes, and as Zach Braff has promoted it one question naturally comes up: why hasn’t he directed anything since Garden State? (“That’s the question every reporter is asking me,” he said to Movieline.)
The answer to that question is pretty simple — he didn’t want to make a shitty movie — but it’s better to read it in his own words. Plus, the actor says he’s soon to make a film called The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, with Chloe Moretz and Jessica Biel. Read More »
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