Category: News

While Hollywood Reporter and Variety may disagree on what the film’s actual name is at this stage, the sequel to Disney’s 1982 Tron film has two of its roles officially cast.

Olivia Wilde (who is best known for her work on leading role on “House” as a doctor who doesn’t even have a first or last name) will play the female lead, a worker in the digital world who helps out in the fight against the Master Control Program, a role that sounds similar to the role that was played by Cindy Morgan in the original.

The other announced cast member is Beau Garrett, a model-turned-actress whose first film role was in Turistas—which coincidentally starred Wilde as well. There are very few details about her character as well, whom HR is only calling “a siren in the digital world.” Considering that it’s computers we’re talking about, this could mean that she’s either been signed to be a femme fatale-kind of character or she could actually play the role of an holographic announcement program.

The last bit of news about Tron 2 (or TRON 2.0 or Tr2n) comes from the gang at AICN, via their source that they’ve code-named “Ford Fairlane”:

If there has ever been a world that 3-D would totally embrace, I think it would be the world of Tron. Specifically, we are going to get a first person view from inside of a light cycle in the film [emphasis mine].

If that isn’t enough news to keep the slavering fanboy base at bay for a while, I don’t know what is.

Who says MySpace is irrelevant these days?

For it was Australian director Tim Boyle’s MySpace brief blog post from the wee hours of Tuesday morning that refuted an Associated Press story (which is no longer online) that trumpeted the announcement of a sequel to the 1996 movie called The Phantom was going to be made.

This fim is NOT a ‘Sequel’. It is a ‘re-luanch’ [sic] or ‘re-boot’ of the comic franchise to the big screen. This film has nothing to do with the 1996 movie.

His subsequent blog post elaborated on the film’s details:

Yes, this is a new look at the comic book hero, but rest assured – He wont be ‘heavily gadget man’ (as that is another comic book hero named Batman) and he wont be an ‘angry mob killer’ (as The Punisher -Frank Castle has been made into a film 3 times – remember the Dolph Lundgren film – that too was shot in Australia… old skool). He will be, without doubt “The Phantom.” A man who has sworn an oath to protect – but at what cost?

Garth Franklin at Dark Horizons was able to score a brief interview with Boyle, who mentioned that the plot of the film—which will be called The Phantom: Legacy—would involve two villains and star the Phantom, his love-interest Diana Walker “and their kids.” The 1996 film’s executive producer Bruce Sherlock is returning, with the rest of the production staff hailing from Sherlock’s Australian-based Sherlock Symington Productions.

Reaction to the news in the blogosphere has been to trash the idea of making a movie about The Phantom citing such facts as the film only making $17 million in the U.S. I couldn’t rightly remember the film myself, so I checked out the Tomatometer and found this very dismissive review from an unnamed writer at Rolling Stone.com:

Don’t they ever learn? every summer, Hollywood drags another hero out of comic strips, pulp novels, radio shows or video games in the hopes of creating the next Batman or Superman franchise. The result is usually something silly like The Shadow, with Alec Baldwin lurking behind a cloak. Billy Zane looks even sillier in The Phantom. We’re talking real silly, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” silly, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” silly.

Personally, I don’t remember much about the original movie, but I do remember that I saw it and was entertained. Oh, and one of the tie-in promotional items was a skull ring, just like the Phantom’s and I owned two of them, one for each hand. Luckily for my sense of needing to be right all the time, I’m not the only one who remembers them.

In any case, I “friended” Boyle on MySpace, which means I’m actually going to have to start using the site again, aren’t I?

It’s getting really ugly out there—and I’m not just talking about the weather.

Over 130 of the Screen Actors Guild’s members, including heavy-hitters like George Clooney, Alan Alda, and Helen Mirren, have come out against asking for a strike authorization of the 110,000 dues-paying members, citing the unstable economy as a reason to hold off on the vote via a letter that was sent to SAG’s leadership on Monday, reports Variety.

We feel very strongly that SAG members should not vote to authorize a strike at this time. We don’t think that an authorization can be looked at as merely a bargaining tool. It must be looked at as what it is—an agreement to strike if negotiations fail.

This came right before a disastrous townhall meeting for SAG president Alan Rosenberg who was in New York City speaking to several hundred members and representatives. Board member Paul Christie told Variety:

They already realize how hard they’ve been hit financially, and the idea that we’d be asking them to go out on strike, and the idea that they’d be asking the IATSE guys, the craft services people, AFTRA guys and everybody else to go on strike at this point, we think, is just insane. I haven’t run into one person here who’s in favor.

However, lining up on the “Yes” side of the strike authorization vote question are about 31 stars, including Hal Holbrook, Mel Gibson, Martin Sheen, and Holly Hunter. This divide parallels the conflict earlier this year between the old Membership First guard and the new Unite for Strength sub-group that won 18 of the 33 board seats in the guild’s elections this summer.

The SAG Watchdog has some very interesting articles talking about these latest developments, but I have to admit that reading them without any context at all is like reading a computer software manual in in Klingon.

*sigh* When will this be over?

As seen on sites like Slashfilm and elsewhere, feast your eyes on the first two official photos from Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson.

While the first one doesn’t reveal enough to speculate on the plot, this next one does, in a very obvious way:

Holmes in a bare-knuckle boxing ring? What kind of case would he be on that would lead him there? This would mark the second film Ritchie’s done that involves boxing; are we going to see a thinly veiled version of Brick Top somewhere in there? I can’t wait to see more.

In 1994, goths and wannabe-goths flocked to the movie The Crow and made wearing eyeliner and cutting yourself cool. Over a decade and a few bad direct-to-DVD films later, Relativity Media and director Stephen Norrington are looking to resurrect the franchise with another feature film outing.

Variety has the story, which includes some details:

[Relativity production chief Tucker Tooley and original producer Ed Pressman] embraced Norrington’s vision of the antihero, which Norrington said will be different than the film [original director Alex] Proyas made.

“Whereas Proyas’ original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style,” Norrington told Daily Variety.

Having enjoyed the original, I do hope they don’t mess with the story or the style too much because the source material that is James O’Barr’s comics series is dripping in bathos, which is part of the appeal of the story. You want this character to get his revenge because of how much pain he’s in.

And considering that Norrington’s last project was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, you’d think he’s learned his lesson about straying too much from the original material by now, right?

After an open casting call and what must have been numerous auditions from almost every kid actor to grace the Disney Channel, EW.com reported that M. Night Shyamalan has found the cast for The Last Airbender, his live action adaptation of the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: the Last Airbender. (The “Avatar” was dropped so as not to be confused with James Cameron’s Avatar, out next Christmas.)

Taking the lead role of Aang—the 112-year old kid who has to save the world—will be an unknown named Noah Ringer who studies karate. Rounding out the cast will be Jackson Rathbone (Twilight) as Sokka, the 15-year old Water tribe warrior; Nicola Peltz (Deck the Halls) as Katara, the 14-year old Waterbender; and Jesse McCartney (former boyband member, now solo R&B musician) as Zuko, the 16-year old exiled Fire Nation prince bent on capturing Aang.

Already, there’s some Internet uproar over a predominantly Caucasian cast for the live-action adaptation of an animated series that many have claimed is “just as good or better than anime” and has many Asian themes to it. For some reason, I’m not as bothered by this as I am the Keanu Reeves story and that’s because I never became an “Avatard” like many of my friends did.

At least Shyamalan cast a kid who knows martial arts as the lead?

Related Posts: (Avatar:) The Last Airbender to hit screens in 2010

I don’t know how to say this without coming across as a stereotypical knee-jerk blogger, but here goes: Keanu Reeves is going to ruin the classic Japanese legend by starring in 47 Ronin.

Damn, and I was so close…

Anyway, Variety reported that Reeves is set to star in the Universal Pictures period film set during during the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. For those of you who have been living under a cultural rock, the tale of the 47 ronin who plotted for two years to avenge the death of their master, only to then turn around and commit honorable seppuku is a story that is based on true events and has been a part of Japan’s literary, cinematic, and television history ever since the 18th century (and is colloquially known as the Chūshingura).

Here’s the part of the Universal story where my sense of historical and literary accuracy goes haywire:

The film will tell a stylized version of the story, mixing fantasy elements of the sort seen in The Lord of the Rings pics, with gritty battle scenes akin to those in films such as Gladiator.

[Wanted screenwriter Chris Morgan] is writing the script and tailoring it so that Reeves—who’s half-Asian—can fit the role as one of the swordsmen. The intention is to begin shooting next year after a director is hired.

Fantasy elements in something that’s based on documented historic events? Changing a real person’s history just so a half-Asian man can play him in a movie? There is loads wrong with both of those statements, and I for one am not going to be a party to this.

A press release that the Geeks of Doom obtained from DCP Boondock II Productions announced that film legend Peter Fonda and former Brat Pack-er Judd Nelson have roles in Boondock Saints 2: All Saint’s Day.

Fonda will be playing The Roman, and Nelson will be playing Concezio Yakavetta, with speculation running rampant over how Nelson’s character is related to the Mafia family that died at the hands of the two Irish brothers whose vengeance spree was being investigated by Willem Dafoe. Dafoe isn’t back in the sequel, but both Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery are, and isn’t that all that matters to the fangirls and fanboys who love this cult film? Also previously announced was the addition of Julie Benz (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) as a female lead, which may enrage those same fangirls who write slash fanfic about the brothers.

I haven’t been watching the Boondock Saints 2 production diaries, but I will note that they’re actively engaging the fanbase with a regular segment called “Fan Questions.” Check out the latest one with Billy Connolly, who plays the brothers’ father below:

The film’s last day of shooting was December 5.

Of course there was going to be a sequel to the Twilight movie that has captured teen hearts all over the world. That’s not news.

What is news is that the sequel will not be directed by Catherine Hardwicke, despite the fact that it’s taken in almost $160 million worldwide over a production budget of only $37 million. (The fact that it has a 44% fresh tomatometer reading is irrelevant because when the source material sucks and your fanbase wants you to stick slavishly to it, there’s not much else you can do.)

The Variety article points out something very interesting to me:

The problem that stalled negotiations [between Summit Entertainment and Catherine Hardwicke] was that Hardwicke had strong opinions about what to do with the next installment, and so did Summit. The debate was how to focus the adaptation of the second book [New Moon], which deals more with giant werewolves than vampires, as well as the long depression of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), after her vampire lover (Rob Pattinson) leaves her. One issue was how to get more of teen heartthrob Pattinson into the film. (Rosenberg has figured out a device to achieve this.) But Hardwicke, burned out from her Twilight labors, simply wasn’t willing to jam this movie with a script that still needed months of development.

And this, my friends, is why people shouldn’t adapt novels that have weak and flimsy plots into movies, no matter how much money it could potentially make.

You’ll notice that there’s been very little Twilight coverage in this blog. Well, that’s because Gordon and I have taste.

However, it’s not going to stop me from linking to this story from Collider.com about the action figures, because the idea of there being a toy with sparkly vampire action makes me giggle.

I know I’m a little late to the Cleopatra party, but when you have a day job like mine, things fall by the wayside.

The news to date about  Steven Soderbergh’s newest brainstorm, Cleo, is that he is in the planning stages of doing a movie musical about the life of ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra that will be shot in 3D. Initial reports on this popped up on places like Variety back in October with its star confirmed as Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The newest news is that Ray Winstone (whom I adored in Beowulf and am eager to finally see him in Scum) is joining the cast as Julius Caesar, and a finer choice has never been made. But the thing that I’m interested in the most is this musical scoring by Guided by Voices.

MTV.com‘s Josh Horowitz got Soderbergh to talk about the disbanded group and how he thought of them:

Soderbergh said he’d been thinking about using frontman Robert Pollard’s music for his long-gestating musical, when a conversation with former GBV member James Greer led to Greer writing the script in just six weeks. “He went away for like six weeks and wrote this great script! It’s like an Elvis musical in a way. It’s not serious. I mean it’s historically pretty accurate but its sort of like Viva Las Vegas meets Tommy.”

Considering that Winstone was in The Who’s Quadrophenia—which is perhaps the best rock musicals around—I was hoping that the musical could have a little bit of that sort of gravitas. And then I went vid-hunting on YouTube:

Er. Yes.

Well, since they’re constantly reinventing themselves, maybe GBV will have something different for the musical?

Fanboy.com‘s Michael Pinto—he who propelled me onto that wild goose chase which ended up at “Life on Mars”—has redeemed himself somewhat by linking to perhaps the best gift you could ever give a film geek for any holiday, or a birthday, or just because you really, really appreciate their hard work over the last six months of blogging (ahem, ahem, Gordon).

From 2006 comes a 50-DVD Criterion set of films that were all distributed through Janus Films, the distributor who is responsible for introducing films like Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Fritz Lang’s M to the American cinescape. Pinto has the entire list of films up on his site, and according to Amazon.com, they’ll sell it to you new for the low, low price of $765.

Of course a true cinephile would wait for the Blu-ray…

There are times I’m glad that here at Movie Make-out we have a very strict news reporting policy and this is one of them.

According to his representatives, there has been no change to Australian director George Miller’s involvement with the Justice League film and that another Mad Max is “being seriously worked on.” This refutes an earlier report that Dark Horizons had on its site, but has since scrubbed from its server and probably set on fire, which stated that (according to Coming Soon):

George Miller appeared on the Sydney-based morning talk show “Sunrise” on Monday and confirmed that he’s no longer involved with the Justice League movie in any capacity; that if the project does get going again, he expects that it’ll be recast as “the studios seem to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now”; [and] that he’d like to work with Mel Gibson again and while the actor doesn’t want to do the Mad Max script he wrote, he hasn’t given up on that possibility just yet.

(Kind of specific for something that has absolutely no basis in fact, huh?)

The updated Dark Horizons announcement explains that “the original scooper, a usually reliable source, also seems to have vanished into the electronic ether.”

It’s no secret that my horse in the race between the AMPTP (aka the evil conglomerates who decide to do things like release a third Grease movie direct to DVD), SAG (aka the group of actors for whom it’s hard to feel sympathy when one of their long-standing demands includes first-class air travel to location shoots [page 8 of the .pdf]) is actually the WGA because not only did they manage to keep together their membership during the tough negotiations, I’m a writer, too. (Hey, I never said it was the most noble of reasons for liking them.)

Well, to overstate the metaphor, according to the AMPTP’s .pdf Fact Sheet, the WGA is entering the fray like a horse that should have been put out to pasture a long time ago:

On November 19th, the Writers Guild of America issued a press release alleging that Hollywood studios “are not paying residuals for writers’ work that is reused on new media.” The WGA issued its press release just as a federal mediator was about to bring SAG and AMPTP together. In addition, the WGA made its complaint about new media residuals without first asking any of the Companies to help resolve any outstanding issues, as is customary practice. The WGA’s press release was highly misleading and seems to have been designed to poison the atmosphere for the federal mediation rather than to actually ensure that residual payments are made to working writers.

At least that’s what it looks like on the surface. But if you read the Fact Sheet a little more closely, my WGA horse is more like the championship stud horse who got sidelined by a very minor injury, only to find out later on that the doctor who treated it botched up the recovery so that even if he wanted to even gallop across the field, he can’t:

Some studios have either made streaming payments to the WGA under the new formula, or are set to make those payments this week. The remaining studios are still working to program their residual systems to incorporate the new formulae.

and

An unprecedented number of new formulas for residual payments for film and television streaming, permanent downloads (EST), and derivative and original made for new media programs that needed to be programmed.

Are you kidding me? The first excerpt sounds a little too much like “Your check is in the mail” whereas I highly doubt that a good, core team of independently chosen mathematicians and computer programmers couldn’t tackle those formulas and whip up a solution in a month.

Still, I have to admit that the WGA’s dramatic timing of their press release was actually quite a bit of genius.

Which is exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of writers.

Of course Debbie Allen is going to be in the remake of Fame. It wouldn’t make sense if she wasn’t. However, the names of the some of the instructors she will be overseeing as the performing arts school’s principal in Lakeshore and MGM’s remake has just been released to places like Variety, and their pedigrees are sound:

• Charles S. Dutton, star of “Roc” and who graduated from the Yale School of Drama will play an acting teacher.
• Juilliard-attendee Kelsey Grammer, who set the bar for classical music snobbery in “Cheers” and “Frasier” will portray an orchestra maestro.
• Megan Mullally who played a screechy rich bitch in “Will & Grace” will play a voice instructor; Mullally is a graduate from the School of American Ballet.
• Bebe Neuwirth, Grammer’s repressed wife on “Cheers” and “Frasier” who surprised the hell out of me when I found out she could sing and who has won two Tony awards will play a dance instructor.

Hollywood Reporter notes that some of the other kids in the cast have been set as well; their names are Kristy Flores, Paul Iacono, Paul McGill, Naturi Naughton and Kay Panabaker and none of them sound familiar to me, which is awesome because there were unknowns in the first Fame as well.

Jazz hands!

Related Stories: Brian K. Vaughn, others make HR’s ‘Next Gen’ list