Posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
Coming to you from my vantage point in good old Blighty, it’s Slashfilm UK. Anglos and Anglophiles rejoice. This week’s is a special installment with two big review pieces and some video reports.
Sorry, Samurai Jack fans – Genndy Tartakovsky is no longer attached to direct The Power of the Dark Crystal. Boo? Hiss? I know he was an incredibly popular choice, but for years all I was hearing was that his version of the film was going nowhere.
But there’s good news. According to a smoking hot press release from The Henson Company, the film is finally set to move ahead with newly appointed directors, Peter and Michael Spierig. If you’ve seen Undead or, even more so Daybreakers, I think you’ll agree that this tie-up is a very good thing indeed.
The full press release also includes details on who has written the script, who is doing the FX and much more.
Posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
Much of the world has received Iron Man 2 already (I’ve seen it with a paying crowd, and rather liked it), but the USA and Canada do not. Almost as though compensation for the wait, however, it seems that the film’s prints are coming to North American cinemas with a special in-the-can bonus.
Pretty much recreating the surprise of when Cloverfield burst from the shadows with a mysterious trailer before Transformers, it looks as though a new secret project from JJ Abrams is going to be officially unveiled this Thursday, when Iron Man 2 takes its first bow at midnight screenings.
This is curious enough. There are, however, some other small, teasing details to discuss and they’ve gotten me even more interested.
Posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
Coming to you weekly from my vantage point in good old Blighty, it’s Slashfilm UK. Anglos and Anglophiles rejoice. This week’s is a special installment including 90 minutes of audio to stream or download.
Posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
The web-digging sleuths at Stitch Kingdom have uncovered a series of URLs registered recently by Disney. They reveal plans for not one, not two but… oh, loads of new stage shows and musicals to be adapted from big-screen movies. Some of them have already happened, some we’ve known about for some time, while others are complete and total shockers. The full list lies beyond the break, including a few surprising head-scratchers.
Posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
We’ve already discussed that Sam Mendes and Adam Shankman were frontrunners to direct Oz the Great and Powerful, an origin story for the Wonderful Wizard that looks set to star Robert Downey Jr. as the titular warlock. Now, it’s looking like Shankman is taking his campaign for the job into the public arena.
Shankman’s biggest, bravest play has been to quit another project, the long in development Bob: The Musical. He’s also making open reference to his desire to land the gig through retweets on his Twitter account. Bye Bob – you sounded like I might at least enjoy you.
The Great and Powerful question, as the LA Times frame it, is which sounds better: Wizard of Oz by way of American Beauty or by way of Hairspray?
Personally, I’d vote Hairspray…and doubly so if we were talking about the original. The prospect of a John Waters trip to Oz is something I’d get really excited about.
The first Saturday in May is always Free Comic Book Day, when you can stop by your local comic shop and pick up some FREE strips to enjoy. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you this when, embedded below the break, we have Kevin Smith‘s commercial for the event and he does a perfectly fine job of selling the event.
Smith didn’t direct the spot, he’s just providing the voice over. So who did direct it? The surprise answer to that question awaits you after the break too.
Posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
Today’s This month’s most bizarre casting news has broken: Sam Rockwell is going to play Batman, or at least The Bat-Man. Joining him will be Josh Hamilton as Superman, Leslie Bibb as Wonderwoman, John Hodgeman as The Penguin and Justin Long as Robin. All together now: Wha???
Didn’t see this coming? Well, I did… kinda…
Posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
Samsung have just last night unveiled their latest size-zero-slim range of LED TVs at a big shindig in the Saatchi Galleries of London. In attendance, as well as the journalists and tech bloggers that Samsung will have been very keen to impress, were a host of celebs with Kevin Spacey, Noel Clarke and newly-ordained Film 2010 host Claudia Winkleman amongst them. Somewhere in the crowd was Nicholas Hoult, and it’s his comments on the upcoming Mad Max fourquel Fury Road that we’re most concerned with right now.
We’ve known since January that Fury Road was going to be a 3D picture, but I think we may have also assumed that it would be shot that way. If we can take a new quote on face value, however, what we’re going to be served up is yet another 2D to 3D conversion. There’s an awful lot of big-budget eggs being put in this particular basket right now.
Posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
The inevitable news of a How to Train Your Dragon sequel broke yesterday, courtesy of a Dreamworks conference call and press release. We learned that the film would be made for cinemas, released in 2013 and… actually, that was it. But what more information about this proposed follow-up is actually out there?
