Posts

Jeremy Renner Confirms That He’s The Future Of ‘Mission: Impossible’ By Russ Fischer/Nov. 24, 2010 5:01 pm EST Just as the title says, call this a confirmation of some of the early stories about the fourth Mission: Impossible film. Specifically, reports said that a second actor would be sought who could continue the series in the absence of Tom Cruise, who has anchored the first three films and is presumably the lead character in the fourth, which has been shooting for the past couple months....

Kansas Man Campaigns To Rename Small Town ‘Smallville,’ Hometown Of Superman By Germain Lussier/Sept. 6, 2012 12:11 pm EST Comic fans all know that Superman’s Earthly origin began in Smallville. It’s there that his ship, sent from the planet Krypton, landed and was discovered by Ma and Pa Kent. The story is over half a century old and, like most comic book origins, completely fictional. Smallville doesn’t exist and while stories in the ’80s revealed its location as Kansas, Superman fans don’t have an official tourist attraction to visit and pay homage....

Michael Chiklis And Forest Whitaker Cast In ‘Pawn’ By Russ Fischer/Nov. 28, 2011 2:30 pm EST Briefly: Attention, fans of The Shield, there is a little mini-reunion of sorts brewing. Actors Michael Chiklis and Forest Whitaker have both been cast in an indie called Pawn. The movie is, as you might hope, a crime picture, and one that features “a hostage situation that has gone terribly wrong” in which “an ex-con becomes entangled in a manipulative chess game between the Feds, local police and the mob....

Movie Deal In The Works To Adapt PlayStation3 Game ‘Heavy Rain’ By Russ Fischer/May 19, 2010 9:01 am EST The PlayStation3 game Heavy Rain is a multi-character detective story, of sorts, that focuses around a mysterious figure called the Origami Killer. The game is deliberately cinematic in many respects, so it’s no surprise that the film rights have been up for sale. Now, the rights auction is about to close and it looks like former New Line guys Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne will be left holding Heavy Rain....

Movie Trailer: ‘Killing Bono’ By Russ Fischer/Dec. 3, 2010 8:39 am EST It’s been almost a year since we heard anything about Killing Bono. Last time we checked in on the film, Nick Hamm was about to direct Ben Barnes, Krysten Ritter, Robert Sheehan, Charlie Cox and Jason Byrne in the movie based on Neil McCormick’s book about being in a band that struggled in the shadow of U2 during the mega-band’s formative years....

Movie Trailer: Full Theatrical Trailer Arrives For ‘True Grit’ By Russ Fischer/Oct. 4, 2010 8:42 am EST Last week we saw a very tantalizing low-key teaser trailer for Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit, which stars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. And on Friday a full-length trailer hit theaters. That longer ad for the film is now online. Where the teaser was all atmosphere and foreboding, this is a much more up-front, almost mainstream way to sell the film....

New Clip And International Poster: ‘Let Me In’ By Russ Fischer/Sept. 2, 2010 2:13 pm EST We don’t post a lot of clips these days. Mostly because I (and Peter, I believe) try to avoid watching them, so as not to spoil films any more than necessary before we see them. So why am I posting this clip from Let Me In? Because it’s part of what we were shown at Comic Con this year, and was very helpful in convincing me that this is a movie to be taken seriously....

New Image: John Cusack As Edgar Allan Poe In ‘The Raven’ [Updated] By Russ Fischer/June 26, 2011 7:29 pm EST Update: Two more images were released over the weekend, and you can see them in the gallery below. We’ve seen another shot or two, semi-official and not at all official, of John Cusack in costume as Edgar Allan Poe in James McTeigue’s film The Raven. Now this is the first for-real official shot of the character, and the only downside is that it looks like the other shots....

Phil Lord And Chris Miller Add Elizabeth Banks And Morgan Freeman To ‘Lego: The Piece Of Resistance’ By Angie Han/Aug. 28, 2012 7:00 am EST To follow up their live-action debut 21 Jump Street, filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller are heading back into the world of animation with Warner Bros.’ 3D tentpole Lego: The Piece of Resistance. And they’re luring some very funny stars to go along with them....

Puppet Noir Comedy ‘The Happytime Murders’ Unveils First Concept Art And Official Synopsis By Angie Han/March 13, 2012 12:00 pm EST It’s been some four years now since we first heard about The Happytime Murders, the Jim Henson Co.’s puppet-centric noir satire, but perhaps spurred on by the success of last year’s The Muppets, the project seems to finally be coming together for real. Katherine Heigl signed on for a starring role sometime last month, and now IM Global has released the first pieces of concept art from the film as well as an official synopsis....

Release Dates: ‘Ender’s Game’ Pushed Back 8 Months, ‘The Dictator’ Moved Back 5 Days, Disney’s ‘Maleficent’ In 2014 By Germain Lussier/April 9, 2012 2:30 pm EST Lots of films are being shuffled around today and here’s the skinny. Gavin Hood’s finally filming, forever in-development adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel Ender’s Game has been pushed from its initial March 15, 2013 release date all the way back to November 1, 2013....

Robert De Niro May Play Bernie Madoff For HBO Film By Russ Fischer/May 15, 2011 1:23 pm EST Deadline and THR both have info on the project, but at this point there isn’t much: Robert De Niro and producing partner Jane Rosenthal are producing the film, and the expectation is that De Niro will play Bernie Madoff, who for decades oversaw investment schemes that bilked billions out of clients. There’s certainly enough resemblance between the two men to make the casting seem like a no-brainer....

Rumor Mill: Wolverine In ‘X-Men: First Class’ And Ex-‘Brave’ Director Brenda Chapman Out At Pixar? By Germain Lussier/Nov. 1, 2010 5:00 pm EST Comic Book Movie was alerted to a Facebook status message from a cab driver in Georgia which said the following: The second rumor is way less exciting. A few weeks back, we ran a story that Brenda Chapman had been replaced in her directorial duties for Pixar’s Brave, formerly titled The Bear and the Bow, which is scheduled for Summer 2012 release....

Sugar Ray Robinson Biopic In The Works By Adam Quigley/Oct. 6, 2010 1:30 pm EST To this day, Sugar Ray Robinson is still frequently cited as the greatest boxer of all time, but does his life warrant the big screen treatment? Producer Rachael Horovitz (State and Main, About Schmidt) seems to think so, as she and Recount screenwriter Danny Strong have optioned his biography Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson for just that purpose....

The Weinsten Co. Will Distribute John Woo’s Reign Of Assassins By Russ Fischer/June 11, 2010 12:12 pm EST It’s almost a great, hopefully not sad cosmic joke that Bob and Harvey Weinstein, so famous for buying and then either recutting or shelving Hong Kong films, will distribute John Woo’s latest made-in-China effort, Reign of Assassins. The Weinstein Company announced today that it has pre-bought North and South American rights to the film, which was produced by John Woo and longtime partner Terence Chang, and co-directed by Woo and Su Chao-Pin, who also wrote....

VOTD: ‘The Raid’ Remade In Claymation, With Cats By Russ Fischer/May 11, 2012 10:30 am EST You might recall many months ago that we posted a short recreation of John Carpenter’s The Thing, animated in stop-motion with clay, and characters re-done as penguins. Now the same artist, Lee Hardcastle, has given the stop-motion remake treatment to Gareth Evans’ film The Raid. Instead of penguins he used the prime currency of the internet: cats....

VOTD: John McClane Is Upset About Kristen Stewart And Robert Pattinson Breaking Up By Germain Lussier/Aug. 31, 2012 2:30 pm EST Bruce Willis has a lot on his mind. Not only does he appear in The Expendables 2, he has Rian Johnson’s Looper coming out in a few weeks, G.I. Joe Retaliation out next year and recently finished shooting on A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film in the Die Hard franchise....

Warner Bros. Greenlights ‘Lego,’ With ‘Robot Chicken’ Director Co-Directing By Russ Fischer/Nov. 14, 2011 5:48 am EST That Lego movie that Warner Bros. has been developing for several years is really happening now. Last year Chris Lord and Phil Miller, writers and directors of the great CGI animated film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, were hired to direct the movie. Now Warner Bros. has greenlit their Lego approach, which will be a live-action/animation hybrid, with about 80% of the film animated at Australian animation house Animal Logic (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole)....

Warner Bros Acquires David Peace’s Occupied City, Wants To Remake ‘Oh God’ Starring Betty White By Russ Fischer/July 13, 2010 12:15 am EST Given the heavy love movie studios have for remakes in the past few years, I’m surprised the George Burns comedy Oh, God! hasn’t been grist for the mill. As it turns out, not for lack of trying. Deadline reports that producer Jerry Weintraub has been trying to remake the film in which God (George Burns) appears to a grocer (John Denver) and chooses him to bring His word to the modern world....

Writer Hired For ‘Dirty Dancing’ Remake By Russ Fischer/Aug. 29, 2011 3:15 pm EST That remake of Dirty Dancing that many have already enthusiastically begun to doubt now has a screenwriter: Maria Maggenti, writer of this summer’s Monte Carlo, will pen the screenplay. When we first heard that Lionsgate wanted to remake the film we heard that Julia Dahl (Uptown Girls writer, West Wing writer/story editor) would write the script. When Kenny Ortega (This Is It, also the original choreographer for the original Dirty Dancing) was hired to direct, suddenly there was no screenwriter attached....