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News > Random News of the Week (April 22 - May 3, 2008)
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MAY
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Random News of the Week (April 22 - May 3, 2008)
By: Doctor Ess
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 With IRON MAN’s success this weekend, there is already talk of a sequel. Paramount will greenlight a sequel for early May 2010. Adding to that, Robert Downey Jr's personal trainer for the film is about to start training with Downey again and will have him "ready to wear the suit again in just 5 months". What’s interesting is that HULK and PUNISHER don’t look to have near the quality of IRON MAN. The only other release for Marvel in the next year is WOLVERINE which might actually work well also (it’s a bit dark but from what we’ve seen so far, it looks interesting).
David Silverman (SIMPSONS MOVIE, Co-Director MONSTERS INC, tons of SIMPSONS episodes) is doing a new movie for Disney called THE PET. The story centers on an every day guy who becomes the pet of a group of aliens.
Jason Bateman will star in EXTRACT, the new comedy from Mike Judge (OFFICE SPACE) for Ternion Productions and Miramax Films. The story is written by Judge, and explores what it's like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you. I actually liked IDIOCRACY. It was lame in too many parts but it had its charms. Maybe it was just that Mike had built up so much good will on OFFICE SPACE, that I was pre-conditioned to anything else. Let’s hope this is a true return to form.
Blizzard has acquired the domain: Diablo3.com. Of course, they claim this has nothing to do with a new game they “might” be making. It was just for “other reasons” that they acquired the domain and they said they “do this sort of thing all the time”. It seems it’s obvious to everyone but Blizzard’s press department that they are building Diablo 3.
Possible news this week that a new XBOX 360 will be available in Septemeber with full Blu-Ray support. So maybe that whole theory about how Microsoft was going to abandon their disc formats and just go digital download only is probably not happening anytime soon. I think MS was smart to not bundle a drive until they saw who won the format wars. That being said, just we wanted, another confusing XBOX model/SKU!
Brandon Routh talked about the upcoming SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL sequel. He said, "I expect that we'll be working early next year. I know that Bryan [Singer] has pretty much finished out "Valkyrie" and is back in the states and is zeroing in on the story that he wants to tell. Once that arrives it's going to move pretty quickly. I think that's going to be a central part of the sequel, getting a good villain that we can actually have physical altercations with. Certainly also, I'd like more humor from Clark or just more of Clark and Jimmy. A little bit more of Lois and Clark, how we used to see them, a bit more of buddies." In reference to all the talk about a SUPERMAN vs. BATMAN movie, "I know that people want to see it and maybe there's a story that could be told that way that makes sense to me. So I won't put it out anymore. I won't say no anymore." Everything sounds good here except more of Clark and Jimmy. Huh?
Crytek has been released as a PC-only game and sales have been disasterous. Even with great reviews, sales have been below 1 million units. A BIG part of this is piracy. Piracy on PC is rampant. In a recent interview with PC Play, Crytek President Cevat Yerli blamed rampant piracy in revealing that future games from the studio would no longer be PC exclusives. Instead, they are going to start working on console only games (another PC publisher bites the dust) and I can’t even blame them because if they can’t make money, what’s the point of sticking with PC?
All the news last week was about Del Toro and THE HOBBIT. We’ve got a few more details coming in this week also. Prep on "The Hobbit" will kick off this Summer, including the 'reforestation' of The Shire sets to look as much like they did in 'Rings' as possible. He's already in contact with Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Howard Shore, John Howe, Gino Acevedo, and Richard Taylor in regards to the film to "ensure that whatever we do we keep continuity with the other films". In regards to effects, "what I would like to avoid is the recreation of the natural environments in CG, I don't like doing that. The movie is essentially a journey movie. I think you need to use locations as much as possible." In regards to the 2nd film, "This second film is not a 'tag on', it's not 'filler', it's an integral part of telling the story of those 50 years of history lost in the narrative. There will be certain things that we will see from the first movie but from a different point of view, but it will feel like a volume, in the five volumes of the entire story."
Eli Roth (CABIN FEVER, HOSTEL) is almost finished on a script for a “family-safe” sci-fi action film. He says, "This will be my first big-budget, PG-13, mass-destruction movie. I went total chaos and pandemonium. I feel like I pushed the violence in R movies about as far as I can push it. I feel like I'm bled out. I wanna switch it up. Everyone I know has been saying 'When are you gonna do a movie my kids can see?' And finally, I'm gonna make a movie that 13-year-old kids can see.” I’ve always felt like Roth had greatness in him so it’s good to see him get off the torture porn nonesense and do something completely new. He could be great.
Infogrames has aqcuired Atari for $11 million in a merger deal this week. (Who would have ever thought it would come to this? 11 million? Ouch!).
News about WOLVERINE came out this week by way of Hugh Jackman. “Tonally, I would put it more in the 'Batman Begins' sort of realm. That's sort of where we're headed. We are dealing with a character who is probably one of the darker comic book characters ever created. The movie has a lot of fun elements, but there are layers of pain and darkness to this character.”
In Karl Urban (DOOM, LORD OF THE RINGS) news (what happened to this guy?), he will lead the cast of the $25 million 3D action movie called RELENTLESS. It’s the story of four extreme sports professionals who survive a plane crash in the Amazon jungle, and must use all their survival instincts as they are hunted by a group of homicidal natives.
GTA 4 was released this week. Check out this police story this week on a person who stole a copy of the game: “Dennis Richard Fiel, 27, of San Diego, is suspected of attempting to steal more than one copy of GTA4 from a local Gamestop. Fiel reportedly pepper-sprayed one of the clerks, grabbed the games from behind the counter, and fled in a white Toyota pickup truck, said police. He was followed by helicopters and eventually surrendered to police at his parent's Suzuya Japanese BBQ restaurant, where he kicked and spat at police officers. He now faces felony robbery charges for the attempted theft. The games were recovered from his truck, and nobody was injured.” Needless to say, some people take the game more seriously than others…
Jon Favreau says his small cameo in IRON MAN as Stark's chauffeur will be expanded on - "Well, that character returns in the Iron Man sequel and has a thing with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow's character). I'm not joking either."
A sequel to the fabulous low budget film THE DESCENT is now a “go”. Unfortunately, Neil Marshall will NOT be back for this one. Based on a script by James Watkins (MY LITTLE EYE), the $10 million sequel will shoot more than eight weeks on location in Scotland and at London's Ealing Studios. Editor Jon Harris will make his directorial debut on the flick.
Ending a 6+ year exit from acting in film, Mel Gibson has just signed to star in EDGE OF DARKNESS, an adaptation of the 1985 BBC mini-series. Martin Campbell (GOLDEN EYE, CASINO ROYALE) will direct the film version from a script by William Monahan (THE DEPARTED). Gibson will play a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed. He plunges into the case and uncovers systemic corruption that led to his daughter's death.
Peter Jackson's THE LOVELY BONES ceased filming this week due to a rift between Jackson and his art director over the best way to depict Heaven. Jackson must be argumentative or controlling or something because these types of issues keep coming up on the films he makes.
INDIANA JONES has been rated PG-13 for 'adventure violence and scary images', whilst THE DARK KNIGHT has also been rated PG-13 for 'intense sequences of violence and menace'.
Detailed character descriptions are online from Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO and confirm our earlier report that this is NOT "Dirty Harry 6". I had reported that this was the case but it looks like it was all just a rumor.
A 35mm copy of THE DARK KNIGHT trailer was given by raffle to a random person in each city that had a screening. The hope was that someone would digitise the footage so we wouldn't have to wait til Sunday for a good quality copy. Someone tried and discovered that the prints have been 'defaced' by the Joker.
Tom Cruise has been in talks with Paramount over a fourth installment to the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE franchise. Cruise’s UA has also tapped longtime “24” writer-producers Joel Surnow and Michael Loceff to write a contemporary spy thriller for the big screen.
Universal has optuioned RESURRECTION, the comic series from Marc Guggenheim. It begins where most other alien invasion movies end, centering on a group of survivors trying to take back control of the planet after an apocalyptic invasion. Hmmm…. Sounds familiar.
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