July
- Peter Berg’s Will Smith superhero flick Tonight, He Comes is renamed John Hancock. Boooooooring.
- Bob Hoskins lets the cat out of the bag and reveals that he’ll be making a motion-captured A Christmas Carol with Robert Zemeckis directing and Jim Carrey as Scrooge. The trades confirm it a few days later, and that Carrey will also play the three ghosts, Hanks-in-Polar Express style. Zemeckis loves him some motion capture, and Carrey could use a hit.
- A Sex and the City movie is actually being made. I was about to muse whether anyone still cared, but on second thoughts, I know plenty do.
- Paramount Pictures releases a mysterious trailer before Transformers that, a few weeks beforehand, AICN’s Moriarty reveals will be for an out-of-nowhere project produced by JJ Abrams tentatively called Cloverfield, which will be a moderately budgeted monster movie shot with camcorders from the perspective of civilians. Viral marketing websites pop up too, but as of this writing even the title isn’t confirmed, although it may be simply the film’s release date – 1-18-08. Rumours abound that the film is a new Godzilla film, a take on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, or something else entirely. Some even speculate it’s a Lost spin-off! (but the two projects are from different studios, so this is about as likely as the theory that Lost is a sequel to Stephen King’s The Stand). The trailer has finally seen an official release online, and it’s a great piece. The film will be directed by Abrams’s Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves and written by stellar Buffy scribe Drew Goddard. The secrecy around this thing was and continues to be impressive. Colour me excited.
- William Shatner reveals that after all the talk of him cameoing in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek film as an older Kirk, Leonard Nimoy will be in fact be appearing and he won’t! Shatner’s said such varying things about this project though that we shouldn’t assume anything until the official announcement.
- CHUD insists that Billy Crudup has been cast as Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. If so, that’s a great, great choice.
- Director Rob Zombie undergoes a week of reshoots for his Halloween remake three months before release. Not a good sign.
- The producers of Bryan Singer’s Harvey Milk biopic, The Mayor of Castro Street – about the first openly gay San Francisco city supervisor – say that it’s next on the director’s schedule after Valkyrie, which calls the status of the Superman sequel into serious doubt.
However, soon after Variety reports that Kevin Spacey intends to return as Lex Luthor for the sequel and that Singer is about to pitch to it to the studio with an eye to filming next year, meaning that he will be potentially shooting three films consecutively. Holy jebus… That’s if Warner greenlights, that is.
- Rob Schmidt, director of Wrong Turn, is attached to make a film version of Stephen King’s novel Insomnia, an interesting gambit since it’s apparently so deeply tied into the Dark Tower series that it won’t stand alone well at all. But that didn’t stop them from filming the Ted Brautigan part of Hearts in Atlantis…
- The trailer for Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone, starring brother Casey, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, and Wire alumni Amy Ryan and Michael K. Williams (Omar!), is released. It’s based on a Dennis (Mystic River) Lehane novel, though be warned that apparently the trailer is quite a misrepresentation of the film, which is much less formulaic than it appears. He may not be a stellar actor, but Affleck’s a smart guy and this is solid material with a great cast, so I’m keen.
- And with a short, fairly unrevealing video, my backflip proceeds by a few more degrees. Just that one glimpse of in-film footage (from the bloody video village, no less!) gives me more hope that Indiana Jones 4 can really work.
- The first footage from the Pegasus-centric Battlestar Galactica TV movie Razor emerges. It’s not much, but I’m tantalised. The Pegasus three-parter ties with the New Caprica arc as Galactica’s high point, so revisiting it – and perhaps finding out some more about the one-year gap in orbit of New Caprica – should be riveting. Razor airs on Sci Fi in November and arrives on DVD on the following day.
- Peter Jackson casts the lead in The Lovely Bones: thirteen-year-old Saoirse Ronan. This project is just rocketing along.
- Zachary Quinto – Sylar from Heroes – is strongly rumoured for the role of Spock in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek film. Not a great choice – I couldn’t believe how un-menacing he was in that pivotal role, even with some meaty bad guy dialogue. And he’s back for season two – enough already!
- Alex Proyas signs to direct Dracula: Year Zero, a project that sounds like a heinous DTV flick but is apparently an excellent script about the life of Vlad the Impaler. Proyas is a solid choice – I just hope he’s given a freer hand than he was on I, Robot so some of his style can make it to the screen.
- At press tour, HBO dodges making any commitments about the Deadwood movies despite hammering from the attending critics. The execs mention the John from Cincinnati factor and that if it’s renewed for a second season, Milch will need to get writing again very soon (gaps between seasons of anything more than a year are apparently not feasible for HBO anymore for some reason). That renewal is clearly up in the air though, given their hypotheticals, the dismal ratings, and the critical response. They eventually concede that the movies have a 50-50 chance. Bloody hell! Just bring the whole damn show back! You could use something that actually rates!
*veers back into the calm realism lane after momentary excursion into flight of implausible fancy*
5 comments:
I saw a poster for The Bourne Supremacy with Matt Damon's mug on it.
Thought you said he was out?
Anyway... read all of that. Going to go sleep now.
I can't recall that. He was always onboard. Trying to think what other franchise I would have mentioned to you where the lead has bailed. Escapes me though.
It was in news retrospective part II:
- Matt Damon says that he won’t be making any more Bourne movies. At least someone knows when to quit.
Although reading that again, you probably meant post supremacy.
Which I took for a given because Ludlum only wrote three before he died, but I forgot that some other cock goblin wrote one.
Probably Kevin J Anderson.
and when I say given I meant not given.
"impossible" I think is what I meant
Ah yes. That was referring to post-Ultimatum, which he would have finished filming by that point since it's out next month.
Yeah, it's quite a trend for estates to approve continuations of dead authors' franchises. I do recall the Ludlum one. I just read that Ian Fleming's has commissioned a new Bond novel! By Sebastian Faulks, IIRC. Will it never end?
But on the Ludlum note, even if he did only write three, the movie series could reasonably continue, since I understand that the adaptations bear little resemblance to their source novels.
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