Film News
Disney and Lionsgate have released a batch of new posters for Toy Story 3 and Kick-Ass. We have a short roundup, after the jump.
Lionsgate has released two new “Call to Action” character posters for Kick-Ass on MTV. Click on through to see the posters in high res.
And check out the International Toy Story 3 Poster which brings the focus back to the original Toy Story toys. [pixarblog]
MovieScore Magazine has confirmed that Academy Award winner Michael Giacchino will be writing the score for Andrew Stanton’s adaptation of John Carter of Mars. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise considering Giacchino’s relationship with Pixar: Giacchino has been working with Pixar for some time, providing the score for The Incredibles, Ratatoille, Up, and short films Lifted, Partly Cloudy, and Teddy Newton’s upcoming short Night And Day.
Official One Pager Release:
Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom Series,” the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter, who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants.
Produced for Walt Disney Pictures by Jim Morris (“WALL•E,” “Ratatouille”) and Colin Wilson (“Avatar,” “War of the Worlds”), the live action/animation film marks Academy Award®-winning director/writer Andrew Stanton’s (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL•E”) first foray into live action. Stanton directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Disney•Pixar’s “WALL•E,” which earned the Academy Award and Golden Globe® for Best Animated Feature (2008); Stanton was nominated for an Oscar® for the screenplay. He made his directorial debut with Disney•Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Academy Award-nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature (2003). He has worked as a screenwriter and/or executive producer on Disney•Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life” (which he also co-directed), “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Ratatouille” and “Up.”
“I have been waiting my whole life to see the characters and worlds of ‘John Carter of Mars’ realized on the big screen,” says Stanton. “It is just a wonderful bonus that I have anything to do with it.”
The stellar ensemble cast is led by Taylor Kitsch (NBC’S “Friday Night Lights”, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) in the title role, Lynn Collins (“50 First Dates,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) as the warrior princess Dejah Thoris and Oscar® nominee Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man 3,” “Shadow of a Vampire”) as Martian inhabitant Tars Tarkas. The cast also includes Thomas Haden Church (“Sideways,” Spider-Man 3), Polly Walker (upcoming “Clash of the Titans,” “Patriot Games”), Samantha Morton (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” “In America”), Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes,” “Body of Lies”), Ciaran Hinds (“Munich,” “There Will Be Blood”), British actor Dominic West (“300,” “Chicago”), James Purefoy (“Vanity Fair,” “Resident Evil”) and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”). Daryl Sabara (“Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” “Spy Kids”) takes the role of John Carter’s teenaged nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The creative team includes Oscar®-nominated production designer Nathan Crowley (“Public Enemies,” “The Dark Knight,” “Batman Begins”), costume designer Mayes Rubeo (“Avatar,” “Apocalypto”), cinematographer Daniel Mindel (“Star Trek,” “Mission Impossible III,” “Spygame”) and video effects supervisor Peter Chiang (“The Reader,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”).
Martin Scorsese is still promoting Shutter Island in various markets, which has led to a handful of big interviews that dive into the subject of various possible projects for the director. We know he’s working on The Invention of Hugo Cabret now, and intends to make the Jesuit drama Silence (delayed some time ago in favor of Shutter Island) afterward. But what of his biopic of Frank Sinatra?
An interview with Shortlist covers a wide range of subjects, but kicks off with a brief conversation about Sinatra, Scorsese’s proposed biopic about the musical icon. The interviewer asks Scorsese which of his previous films Sinatra might compare to, but unfortunately leads with two options, Goodfellas and The Aviator, which the filmmaker jumps on as an easy out.
I was hoping it would be a combination of the two. Yeah, because in structure I’d like it to be more like GoodFellas. But like The Aviator, it only deals with certain times in his life. We can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life. We tried this already. Just can’t do it. So the other way to go is to have three or four different Sinatras. Younger. Older. Middle-aged. Very old. You cut back and forth in time – and you do it through the music. See what I’m saying? So that’s what we’re trying for. It’s very tricky [laughs].
More interesting is that Scorsese says he’s “dying to do” two projects that could be described as “low-budget, down-and-dirty street movies.” From the sound of it, the 30-day shoot for Boardwalk Empire’s pilot is helping push him back to the realm of his roots.
I shot an HBO pilot, Boardwalk Empire…I did that, shot it in 30 days. For me, it’s like a new lease on life. I’m trying to get myself to a point where I can work faster and cheaper.
That working ‘faster and cheaper’ could be a direct response to the pressures of filmmaking today. Elsewhere in the interview Scorsese talks about the fact that he is never free from the constraints of budgets and time. “You’re always on the line,” he says. “Fighting, fighting, fighting to get the film made that you want made. And if you go cheaper, you might have more of a stand. And that’s what I’m hoping to do.”
Finally, there’s the 3D question. Scorsese has been enthusiastic about the possibility of 3D in recent interviews (very enthusiastic, at times) and a Variety article not long ago suggested that The Invention of Hugo Cabret would be his first foray into the format. (Makes sense, as it could be more of a family film than his other work.) But while he evidently remains optimistic about 3D, comments to Shortlist don’t seem to indicate that he’s working with 3D now.
“I would like to [make a 3D film],” Scorsese says. “I’m very excited by 3D…But if the camera move is going to be a 3D effect, it has to be for dramatic purposes – not just throwing spears at the audience. And that, maybe I can’t do that. Maybe my daughter’s generation – she’s 10 now – can think that way.”
On the blah blah rounds to promote her latest picture The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, producer Nina Jacobson has let slip the main talent attached to upcoming project One Day. She revealed that as well as director Lone Scherfig, BAFTA nominated for An Education, there’s also potential stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess in orbit too. The contracts aren’t signed yet, said Jacobson, but “their deals are being negotiated right now.”
One Day is to be adapted from David Nicholls‘ novel of the same name. The book’s big idea is that the narrative is set on St. Swithin’s day only, but on that day every year over a 20 year period from 1988 to 2008. Expect to see Hathaway and Sturgess subjected to a whole roster of fancy haircuts and fashions, then.
The lead characters start as students at Edinburgh University who share a one night stand that isn’t expected the have long lasting effects. Each annual chapter that follows traces their progress over two decades of life apart or, more often, crossing paths. I saw the book’s style and tone compared to that of a Nick Hornby novel by reviewers, a fact which seems more illuminating than it really is when you first connect the dots between Hornby and Scherfig.
I like the idea of Sturgess and Hathaway being cast because I rather enjoy both of them, particularly Sturgess.
St. Swithin’s Day, in case you don’t know, is probably the closest British tradition to Groundhog Day and occurs on July 15th, just as the UK weather could be turning from spring time showers to summer sun. There’s a famous rhyme:
St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
Which basically says, whatever the weather on that day, the next 40 days will be the same. Never stopped to check, myself, but I doubt very much that any British weather has been the same for two consecutive days let alone for over a month.
Via Coming Soon
So much for those ‘please turn off your cell phone’ messages before movies. A new German horror film called Last Call is pushing a new ‘interactivity’ gimmick that will have one member of each theatrical audience receive a call from an onscreen character during the film. The ghost of William Castle approves.
Jawbone (via Gizmodo) has news on the film, which harbors some not insignificant ambitions. Last Call won’t just phone up an audience member during the film. Special language recognition software will “transform the participant’s answers via mobile phone into specific instructions. A specially developed software then processes these commands and launches an appropriate follow-up scene. The dialogue between the movie’s main actress and an audience member leads to a different film - and outcome - every time: sometimes with a happy end, sometimes with a more gruesome one.”
So it works like this: you provide your cell number when purchasing a ticket, then software will randomly call one of the submitted numbers. Answer the call and you’ll hear the on-screen actress requesting help. Then the audience member “has to help her escape by choosing a path through the old, rundown sanatorium. Furthermore, he also decides whether she should help other victims to flee the scene -and every single choice shapes her fate: it’s a matter of life and death.”
Amusing concept, sure, and it seems like great fodder for drunken midnight screenings. Maybe not so much for run of the mill events. It is so easy to envision how audience members would mess with the system. “What should I do?” “Eat bacon!” “Lay down and die!” What happens if the person called just hangs up? How many possible outcomes will there be?
Anyway, here’s the sales pitch / trailer:
So much for those ‘please turn off your cell phone’ messages before movies. A new German horror film called Last Call is pushing a new ‘interactivity’ gimmick that will have one member of each theatrical audience receive a call from an onscreen character during the film. The ghost of William Castle approves.
Jawbone (via Gizmodo) has news on the film, which harbors some not insignificant ambitions. Last Call won’t just phone up an audience member during the film. Special language recognition software will “transform the participant’s answers via mobile phone into specific instructions. A specially developed software then processes these commands and launches an appropriate follow-up scene. The dialogue between the movie’s main actress and an audience member leads to a different film - and outcome - every time: sometimes with a happy end, sometimes with a more gruesome one.”
So it works like this: you provide your cell number when purchasing a ticket, then software will randomly call one of the submitted numbers. Answer the call and you’ll hear the on-screen actress requesting help. Then the audience member “has to help her escape by choosing a path through the old, rundown sanatorium. Furthermore, he also decides whether she should help other victims to flee the scene -and every single choice shapes her fate: it’s a matter of life and death.”
Amusing concept, sure, and it seems like great fodder for drunken midnight screenings. Maybe not so much for run of the mill events. It is so easy to envision how audience members would mess with the system. “What should I do?” “Eat bacon!” “Lay down and die!” What happens if the person called just hangs up? How many possible outcomes will there be?
Anyway, here’s the sales pitch / trailer:
Amazon’s Gold Box Deal of the Day is Futurama: The Complete Collection for $84.99, 58% off the $200 msrp. The Comic Con Exclusive set includes all four volumes of Futurama, as well as 4 feature-length adventures: Bender´s Big Score, The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender´s Game, Into the Wild Green Yonder all contained in a limited edition collectible Bender Head with a numbered letter from Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The deal is only valid until Midnight on Thursday night, so get it while you can!
Amazon is also selling He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Complete Series on DVD for only $9.99, 60% off the $25 suggested retail price. The 4-disc set includes all 39 30-minute episodes, End of Episodes Morals, Interviews with Toyline Artists from Mattel and The Four Horsemen, 12 audio commentaries, Scripts for episodes 1-40 and a PDF Comic Book for unproduced episode #40
In December 2009, we told you that Paramount Pictures was launching an intiative to develop of slate of ‘micro-budget’ movies, based in part on the success of Paranormal Activity. Each of these new films would have $100k to play with, and would theoretically get a theatrical release.
Now the business plan has a name, Insurge, and a few more details have been publicly revealed about Paramount’s plan.
IndieWire has some info on Insurge, based in part on the mini-studio’s website, which was briefly online last night. (The site is down now; Insurgepictures.com simply redirects to Paramount’s main site.)
As we knew previously, Insurge will have a million-dollar budget to devote to ten $100k films in the first year of business. Amy Powell, Paramount’s SVP of Interactive Marketing, is reportedly heading Insurge. That’s an interesting hire, as it more dramatically places these films at the intersection of the studio and marketing. Which is exactly the sense one gets from the written copy on the Insurge site, as grabbed by IndieWire:
Aren’t you tired of being fed the same movies wrapped in different paper? We want to find and distribute crazy, unpredictable, and hopefully awesome movies - movies that make you want to line up to see at your local theater with all your friends (and us). Movies that a big studio would never release because they’re too risky, too silly, and they don’t star Sandra Bullock.
As we reported previously, the plan is to involve an online community in the development and marketing of the films. IndieWire quotes a source saying that the online community could help cast roles or vote on a film’s poster. Insurge is reportedly looking to produce an array of small films with mainstream appeal that would include horror, comedy and animated pictures. The site calls it an ‘experiment,’ and if the setup works as intended — that is, as a proving ground for new filmmakers — I’m all for it. At least in theory. Let’s see how Paramount makes this work, and for how long.
Just as the teaser hits for the new Twilight movie, here’s word on a film that could be the polar opposite of Eclipse. Directed by Matt Reeves, Let Me In is the remake (or re imagining, as some have said) of the Swedish film Let the Right One In. It stars Chloë Moretz, who is also in Kick-Ass. As she starts to promote that film, she’s talking a bit about Let Me In, and describing a take on vampires that is quite different from that of Twilight.
Speaking to Movieline, Moretz described her Let Me In character, the young (or young-looking) vampire Abby:
Usually a lot of movies glamorize being a vampire. It’s pretty, it’s cool, you look awesome! The way we did it was that it;s not cool to be a vampire. It’s a burden that she has to carry with her, not this fun, cool, interesting thing. It’s scary, deep, and dark, this devil inside of her. The vampire is different than Abby. It’s like her alternate personality, and when it takes her over, she has no control.
Cinematical talked to the film’s producer, Simon Oakes, who says the film will likely be R-rated and “stay true to the imagery and mystique and the mythology of the original.” In keeping with that, he makes the horror elements sound rather low-key:
At the end of the day, you could make this movie and never use the word “vampire.” You could say this is a love story between two kids. I think an understanding of genre helps, because there are obviously some big set piece-genre moments in it.
But then there’s this:
It’s not a re-imagining; the same beats [are there]. Maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We haven’t been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously, for budgetary reasons.
The only thing that bugs me here is that quote about scares and budget, which suggests that creating scares on film is linked directly to effects. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can make a scary film with no money, as long as you have a camera, actors and an imagination. Other statements in the Cinematical interview suggest that ‘more scary’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘more gory,’ and in general it sounds like Let Me In isn’t being pushed in a direction that will make it feel untrue to the story.
