“Yeah, I think it’d be fun!” Thurman enthusiastically replied when asked if she’d be up for playing Beatrix once again. In terms of actual progress on the script, Uma revealed that, “[Tarantino and I] did chat, we did chat. He has not yet finished the script. I don’t even really know if he’s really started it, although I got a taste of some of his ideas and they are really good.”
Variety reports that the larger Disney studio will now handle certain, “marketing, distribution, operations and administrative support functions from its Burbank headquarters.” That amounts to an almost 75% reduction in their staff down to just 20 remaining executives. Although Disney isn’t naming names for now, a series of meetings next week will say who stays and who goes. Word is that some of the people let go will be from the production and development side of things, with such rumored names floating around as production prexy, Keri Putnam, and acquisitions veep, Peter Lawson.
Fans of the X-MEN franchise were weary when first hearing about Ratner directing the third film for the installment. Well if you saw LAST STAND, then it’s possible your in the huge crowd of people who thought it was garbage. This is how Ratner feels about the response, “You can’t make these people happy. I’m kind of the anti-Christ to these comic book geeks. Every single person that wrote shit went to see that movie multiple times because a movie doesn’t gross $200 something million unless people go to see it more than once.”
Of course, he continued, “Every single person who said, ‘I’m never seeing that movie’, they were the first ones there. What are they concerned about? It’s out of the filmmaker’s hands. A film is a collaborative effort. How’s a person sitting at home going to worry about how a movie is going to turn out to be?” I did go see it, once. I love X-MEN regardless of who directs it, but after seeing it, I didn’t need to see it again.
It gets worse. Ratner claims that he made the franchise more popular than ever, “The most ridiculous statement I’ve read is – and of course I looked at the internet after the movie came out – that I buried the franchise. “If I buried the franchise how the fuck did they make a Wolverine? I mean, that’s ridiculous. And they’re making three other fucking X-Men movies. Mine kept the franchise alive!”
“We’re hoping that it’s the first week in March,” said Raimi.
At the moment, pre-production is in full swing, even as screenwriter Gary Ross (”great director and a very fine writer,” said Raimi) continues to work on the script.
“He’s working on a draft,” he continued. “I just gave him some notes and he’s doing a rewrite right now.”
On other fronts, “Spider-Man 4″ continues to chug along. “The production is starting to come together,” Raimi told us. “I’ve got a production designer who is starting to design the sets and the environments that the picture will take place in. We just brought aboard Scott Stokdyk as one of the two visual effects supervisors, and I worked with him on all three ‘Spider-man’ pictures.”
With Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst set to reprise their roles, Raimi and his team will soon turn their attention to filling out the rest of the cast. “None of the casting has really taken place, but we’re starting to think about that now,” the director said.
MGM Studios has decided to push Joss Whedon’s anticipated The Cabin in the Woods, directed and co-written by Cloverfield’s Drew Goddard, back nearly a year, from its original release date of February 5, 2010 to the new date of January 14, 2011.
MGM reps tell ShockTillYouDrop.com the reason they’re doing this is because the early response to the film has been phenomenal and they’re going to spend six months or so converting the picture to 3-D.
There is nothing else scheduled for that 2011 date, which is the four-day weekend to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, although the fourth Underworld movie is currently scheduled to open one week later.
Chuck Viane, in Disney’s domestic distribution department, called the extension “open-ended”, but it likely won’t run past November 2nd. That’s the day when the studio debuts its 3-D holiday flick, A Christmas Carol. The solid showing has Disney up in arms, and we’ll likely see more classics rendered for today’s 3-D-manding (get it?) audiences. Beauty and the Beast, an obvious test balloon, is set to have a 3-D release in 2011.
CanalPlus.fr has published a brand new behind the scenes report from the set of Iron Man 2, complete with interviews with director Jon Favreau and star Robert Downey Jr.
The report features a bunch of new footage, including a look at Tony Stark’s at-home particle accelerator project. There is also a series of shots with Scarlett Johansson, who plays Black Widow, and some shots of Mickey Rourke as Whiplash. It’s interesting to hear that things are getting “a bit darker,” while keeping with the tone of the first film.
All signs still pointing to Iron Man 2 being awesome. Have your own look at the new stuff below.
MTV talked to Favreau about The Avengers while he was promoting Couples Retreat, and his statement about directing the film was quite clear:
They’ll have to [find a different director], because I’m not going to be available. It’s something I’m being the executive producer on, so I’ll definitely have input and a say. It’s going to be hard, because I was so involved in creating the world of Iron Man and Iron Man is very much a tech-based hero, and then with ‘Avengers’ you’re going to be introducing some supernatural aspects because of Thor. How you mix the two of those works very well in the comic books, but it’s going to take a lot of thoughtfulness to make that all work and not blow the reality that we’ve created.”
If early reports from the East Coast are to be believed, this is not the happy Avatar Day that James Cameron and Fox wanted. Reading Twitter feeds is not quite an exact science, but people are saying that they attended screenings in theater that were half, or less, full.
LIONSGATE, the leading next generation studio, announced today that it has acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to KICK-ASS, the hotly anticipated action-comedy from writer/director Matthew Vaughn (LAYER CAKE, STARDUST). Based on the groundbreaking, best-selling comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., KICK-ASS stars Nicolas Cage (the upcoming SEASON OF THE WITCH, KNOWING, NATIONAL TREASURE), rising star Aaron Johnson (the upcoming NOWHERE BOY), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (SUPERBAD) and Chloe Moretz ((500) DAYS OF SUMMER). The screenplay is written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman. The producers are Matthew Vaughn, Brad Pitt, Tarquin Pack and Kris Thykier; Millar and Romita Jr. are co-producers. The announcement was made today by Joe Drake, Lionsgate President, Motion Picture Group, and Co-Chief Operating Officer, and Jason Constantine, Lionsgate President of Acquisitions and Co-Productions. KICK-ASS was the buzz sensation of the July Comic-Con in San Diego, where early footage was shown to wildly appreciative fans. The film is a privately financed independent production from Vaughn’s Marv Films and Plan B Entertainment, and is currently in post-production. Lionsgate anticipates a wide release in 2010.
“Battlestar Galactica” appears to be on a fast track and sources said that Singer could be looking at a $10 million paycheck to sign on to the film. Singer has long been intrigued with “Battlestar Galactica” and flirted with relaunching it into a TV series right after he directed the original “X-Men.” Back in 2001 I wrote about his plan, which involved teaming with Tom DeSanto to exec produce the series. Singer planned to direct the pilot of the new version of a series that originally launched on ABC in 1978 and ran two seasons. It is possible that the timing of the series went awry because of the World Trade Center disaster that occurred later that year. Certainly, it made a series that launched with the attack and destruction of earth unpalatable.
Variety is reporting that the Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group is about to sign on the dotted line to acquire Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which the studio will likely distribute in theaters through its Sony Pictures Classics branch, maybe as early as this year.
Quentin Tarantino is still on the road to bringing us the long-awaited, full, four-plus-hour version of Kill Bill that he originally intended. Even though we still haven’t seen Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair materialize in stores, Tarantino has updated us on the status of the project, continuing to promise that it’s still on its way. Last time we reported on the promised full version of Kill Bill, several different details were revealed about what would differ from the separate Vol.1 and Vol.2 releases. Some of the details were that the black-and-white “House of Blue Leaves” fight sequence will be in color; that there will be gorier anime sequences; and no “baby cliffhanger” that’s at the end of Vol.1. However, one of the biggest changes to the full version will be the addition of a newly created sequence that will take place during the anime segment featuring Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii. Tarantino is still finishing up Inglourious Basterds (since it still hasn’t had it’s theatrical release), but says he’ll move onto The Whole Bloody Affair straight after that. Here’s what he told SciFiWire:
“I need to do one thing with it, though… I’m not going to monkey around with the movie itself, but we’ve actually done a whole new section for the anime as the last thing [we added]. I actually wrote a much longer script for the anime section during O-Ren’s revenge chapter. Remember the guy with the long hair that kills her father? It’s like, what happened to that dude? Well, I wrote it and it was the biggest, most elaborate thing I wrote-her taking him down.
Tarantino says that this added anime sequence was conceived back when he had the four-plus-hour movie in mind, as opposed to it being split into two separate ones. He says that the reason they never had the full anime sequence is because it was so big (read: would add to the already VERY long runtime). However, Tarantino reveals that he more recently showed Harvey Weinstein exactly what he had written before shooting the Kill Bills and they went ahead and made the extended anime sequence with the same team (Production I.G.) that made the existing sequence within Kill Bill Vol.1. Tarantino claims that all that’s left to do is go over it a bit with the anime team, to make sure everything’s right.
The following was emailed to Deadline Hollywood Daily by a Bandslam insider who’s also a prominent filmmaker (and asked to be anonymous) in response to her box office report that the Walden Media/Summit Entertainment pic had a disastrous $2.3M weekend despite great reviews, and that the marketing/packaging was so young that moviegoers thought it was High School Musical when it was closer to School Of Rock:
“Isn’t there a story here? Death by marketing? A movie that gets 80% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes — 90% from top critics — won’t see the light of day because Summit consistently made some of the worst choices, and their core audience summarily dismissed the movie without seeing it based on their sale.
Start off with the fact that they chose BANDSLAM for a title instead of WILL. They thought WILL was too indie. But that’
what made this movie special. It was an indie voice wrapped up in a high concept. So, instead of selling it quirky and cool (a la Juno) they sold it on the Disney channel’s Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Milchaka. Instead of selling the concept, band of outcasts like The Commitments, they Disneyfied this movie with glitter paint. So what is an ironic, smart script with a killer soundtrack was sold like High School Musical meets Phil Of The Future. Instead of embracing it for its quirky-ness, for its unique voice (Will, the lead, calls high school “Guantanamo Bay with a lunch period”) they flattened it out so it looked like everything else. There have been literally dozens and dozens of calls today and e-mails from heads of marketing at different studios saying this may be singly the worst job they’ve ever seen on a movie whose unique voice deserved to be heard through positioning, title, marketing tie-ins, and knowing your audience. But Rob Freidman and Summit infantalized their audience. They presumed that since HSM was a hit, and the same star was in their movie singing, they should just sell it the same way.
Nancy Kirkpatrick took instructions from Rob. He had this idea in his head to sell it with the Disney slant, and no one could sway him. People tried, trust me. They knew the movie tested through the roof but the materials didn’t. And still he was bullish. He’s just so fucking arrogant. The real problem was that this was [Walden Media] Cary Granat’s baby and when he was let go, and Alex Schwartz was let go, and Alex Schwartz was let go – the project got taken over by Summit. Eric Feig was in the middle of TWILIGHT, so it became Rob’s baby. He saw Vanessa singing and he could only could think of one way to sell it. The only problem is, she’s not playing Gabriella from HSM. She’s playing a dark, monotone goth character. And she’s really pretty good. But you wouldn’t know it by the ads. They should have let the audience re-discover her as this Aly Sheedy, Breakfast Club, freak, but instead, they found shots of her smiling, and sold it on that. And even though the movie was so NOT Disney. You’ve got lines like “A Nuremburg rally produced by MTV”, and a whole section that takes place in an abandoned CBGB’s talking about The Killers, The Sex Pistols, Black Flag, The Police, and U2. I mean, come on, this is NOT High School Musical. You’ve got a kid obsessed with David Bowie, writing him letters throughout the movie.
Look at the comments you got in your own section on this, the movie deserved to be seen. Todd Graff wrote and directed a beautiful lyrical film with a killer soundtrack that the Hollywood Reporter critic compared to a cross between Cameron Crowe and John Hughes. Read the Washington Post review. It’s crazy making.
For what it’s worth, Rob is very contrite now. He’s apologizing to everyone. Tail between his legs, that kind of thing. But as the reality hits, it’s too little, way too late. Heartbreaking.
While the theatrical version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn’t contains 10 minutes of footage not seen in the leaked workprint as Tom Rothman claimed, it does contain some added “Easter eggs”. Gavin Hood appeared at a press screening in Hollywood tonight, and the director revealed that the theatrical cut would feature multiple “Easter egg endings” (or what some call “a button”) following the credits.
FirstShowing was in attendance and saw one of the endings, which Alex tells me ran 25-30 seconds in length and featured the character of Deadpool. It’s not clear how many different endings will be released, but the director said more than one.
Before we even get to see what Josh Brolin looks like as titular character Jonah Hex, and before we even get to see what John Malkovich or Michael Shannon look like, our very first photo from Warner Brothers’ Jonah Hex is, of course, of Megan Fox. Thanks to the site Movie Gab (which I don’t suggest visiting because of their rather inappropriate ads), we’ve finally got a good photo of Megan Fox in her old west outfit. This isn’t the first time any photos of Fox on the set of Jonah Hex have popped up, but this is the first time we’ve seen her fully in costume. Once you take a look at this, you’ll know why we just had to post it.
In Jonah Hex, Megan Fox plays Leila, a gun-wielding beauty and the love interest of Hex, a disfigured bounty hunter who is tracking down a voodoo practitioner that wants to raise an army of undead to liberate the South. Former Pixar animator Jimmy Hayward is directing this for a August 6th, 2010 release date. Shooting started earlier this month in both Sylmar, California as well as St. Francisville, Louisiana. I’m not sure when we’ll get our first real look at Josh Brolin, who I also can’t wait to see considering his disfigured face is so integral to the character, but you can be sure we’ll be on the lookout for more.
▪ Portman the webmaster?
There might be a new face on the webmasters panel at the Comic-Con this year. Natalie Portman? The actress we all love to love has started up her own movie website called MakingOf.com. Portman has been making the rounds at Tribeca promoting the site, which describes itself as providing “an intimate, fresh look into the process of making a movie by the insiders themselves.” It also posts movie news, posters, clips, trailers and pretty much everything we do here except I look nothing like Natalie Portman (well almost nothing).
I trolled around the site for a while and it’s still in beta so navigation wasn’t the easiest task and it was difficult to figure out what their exclusive content was and what was just EPK type stuff. Also, it seems to me a little difficult to just sit and watch actors talking about acting. I like actors talking about film but it just seems a little flat in certain circumstances here. Though the stuff with the behind-the-scenes people like directors (Michel Gondry and Ron Howard) was a little more interesting. Check it out at MakingOf.com.
▪ Robert Rodriguez rebooting Predator
Sin City director Robert Rodriguez will be directing and producing a reboot of the Predator franchise for 20th Century Fox according to IESB. The reboot will revolve around a “team of commandoes [who] face down a mysterious race of vicious monsters.”
Rodriguez talked to the audience of press members and revealed his upcoming film slate.
“I’m going to be able to shoot my upcoming Machete here, a sci-fi action film called Nervewrackers, a re-boot of the Predator series called Predators, and a couple of smaller movies called Sin City 2 and The Jetsons.”
It seems Rodriguez will be busy for the foreseeable future so we may not be seeing the reboot anytime soon. I didn’t see the AVP stuff, but I did see the original Predator and enjoyed it. If it is as good as that (or better) i’ll be happy.
Update from ERC: Apparently Robert Rodriguez is not directing, but still producing. The release date is set for July 7, 2010, however no writer or director has been hired as of yet.
▪ 
LIONSGATE, the leading next generation studio, announced today that it has acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to KICK-ASS, the hotly anticipated action-comedy from writer/director Matthew Vaughn (LAYER CAKE, STARDUST). Based on the groundbreaking, best-selling comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., KICK-ASS stars Nicolas Cage (the upcoming SEASON OF THE WITCH, KNOWING, NATIONAL TREASURE), rising star Aaron Johnson (the upcoming NOWHERE BOY), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (SUPERBAD) and Chloe Moretz ((500) DAYS OF SUMMER). The screenplay is written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman. The producers are Matthew Vaughn, Brad Pitt, Tarquin Pack and Kris Thykier; Millar and Romita Jr. are co-producers. The announcement was made today by Joe Drake, Lionsgate President, Motion Picture Group, and Co-Chief Operating Officer, and Jason Constantine, Lionsgate President of Acquisitions and Co-Productions. KICK-ASS was the buzz sensation of the July Comic-Con in San Diego, where early footage was shown to wildly appreciative fans. The film is a privately financed independent production from Vaughn’s Marv Films and Plan B Entertainment, and is currently in post-production. Lionsgate anticipates a wide release in 2010.
“Battlestar Galactica” appears to be on a fast track and sources said that Singer could be looking at a $10 million paycheck to sign on to the film. Singer has long been intrigued with “Battlestar Galactica” and flirted with relaunching it into a TV series right after he directed the original “X-Men.” Back in 2001 I wrote about his plan, which involved teaming with Tom DeSanto to exec produce the series. Singer planned to direct the pilot of the new version of a series that originally launched on ABC in 1978 and ran two seasons. It is possible that the timing of the series went awry because of the World Trade Center disaster that occurred later that year. Certainly, it made a series that launched with the attack and destruction of earth unpalatable.
Quentin Tarantino is still on the road to bringing us the long-awaited, full, four-plus-hour version of Kill Bill that he originally intended. Even though we still haven’t seen Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair materialize in stores, Tarantino has updated us on the status of the project, continuing to promise that it’s still on its way. Last time we reported on the promised full version of Kill Bill, several different details were revealed about what would differ from the separate Vol.1 and Vol.2 releases. Some of the details were that the black-and-white “House of Blue Leaves” fight sequence will be in color; that there will be gorier anime sequences; and no “baby cliffhanger” that’s at the end of Vol.1. However, one of the biggest changes to the full version will be the addition of a newly created sequence that will take place during the anime segment featuring Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii. Tarantino is still finishing up Inglourious Basterds (since it still hasn’t had it’s theatrical release), but says he’ll move onto The Whole Bloody Affair straight after that. Here’s what he told SciFiWire:
Start off with the fact that they chose BANDSLAM for a title instead of WILL. They thought WILL was too indie. But that’
