Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Religious

It’s so creepy when something you just found yourself chatting about with a fellow geek pops up in your newsfeed — proof that Magdalena does answer to a higher power! If you were praying for an update, MTV has not one, but an entire week they’re devoting to the spear-wielding superheroine.

MTV has a video interview up with the lovely Jenna Dewan, who’s playing Patience, the most recent inheritor of the Magdalena powers. According to her, they’re following the comic book pretty closely except for one touchy area — while honoring Magdalena’s heritage and bloodline, they’re sidestepping the religious element of the book. “When I started this I said I didn’t want it to be a religious movie - the Catholic Church versus everyone else. I wanted it to be somebody who knows she has something inside bigger [than herself], this spiritual want to help people,” Dewan said. “That’s really what we’re focusing on - fighting the darkness for the light, rather than the Catholic Church and religion. There is that element of it but it’s more about fighting people who are evil in this world.”

Now, I always thought of the Magdalena as the girl version of Stephen Sommers’ Gabriel Van Helsing and not particularly controversial, but we do live in touchier, Golden Compass censoring times. As Dewan points out, Patience is one of the only Magdalenas who questions the authority of the Church and decided she would work independent of its control. Wouldn’t it have been cool to see that religious conflict onscreen? Ah well. My previous jokes about chastity and skimpy costumes aside, I’m happy to see Gale Anne Hurd bringing another tough chick (and one from the comics, no less) to the screen — with or without the sacrilege.

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Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, Mystery & Suspense, Scripts, Family Films, Newsstand, Dreamworks, Steven Spielberg

Remember that ginormous project called 39 Clues that was announced awhile back — a worldwide mystery to span books, interactive games, trading cards and a movie deal, courtesy of Steven Spielberg? The first book in the series, The Maze of Bones, hits shelves all over the world next Tuesday, the same day as its interactive online game. Will it spark an obsession along the lines of Twilight or Harry Potter? Time will tell.

Steven Spielberg has confidence in it, though. Acccording to Variety, he’s hired his old pal Jeff Nathanson to pen the script, marking their fourth collaboration together. They paired up previously on The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Spielberg is still eying Clues’ director’s chair, and it will be interesting to see where this can fit into his busy schedule, where Tintin and Lincoln were taking precedence. Does he want this worldwide money hunt (the prize for solving the project’s mystery is $10,000) to be over before the movie, or will the bloom be off the rose by then? What if the whole multiplatform concept fails spectacularly? Are the books still filmable? The ambition of 39 Clues leaves me doubting whether it can deliver — but I can hardly pretend to have better judgment than Spielberg. At any rate, I’ll be watching the book pages with interest to see what audiences make of The Maze of Bones — if anyone out there buys it, give us the scoop!

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Filed under: Action, Classics, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, Warner Brothers, Celebrities and Controversy, Distribution, 20th Century Fox, Newsstand, Politics, Comic/Superhero/Geek

The date has been set for Warner Bros and Fox to go head to head — and it should soothe the fearful. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studios will be going before the judge on January 6th. There’s plenty of time, even at a snail’s pace, for the issue to be resolved before the March 6th opening. (It’s like the court is going along with the movie marketing — we’ll get a video journal the same day. There really is no such thing as bad publicity in Tinseltown!)

Furthermore, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allan Feess says that Fox shouldn’t attempt to file a preliminary injunction against Warners to stop the release of the film because the issues surrounding the case were too complex to be solved in an interim basis. Instead, both studios are being ordered to put their cases together, and start expedited discovery and depositions. This thing could get quite big — as the New York Times pointed out, Paramount, Legendary Pictures, and even Universal could get hauled into it, alongside Lawrence Gordon, who’s really the man in question in all this.

And remember, this is if it actually makes it to court. This could easily be settled before Christmas, with Warners handing over a nice chunk of The Dark Knight change just to be done with it. (How appropriate that Bruce Wayne help out other costumed vigilantes.) It depends how fierce the studio is feeling, and how certain they are of their case — but all signs point to you keeping your March 6th moviegoing plans.

You really have to feel bad for the cast and crew on this one, though. All that happy buzz of ComicCon panels and promo posters squashed under a heap of legalese. Oh well, at least Fox can’t take away what we’ve already been given. Check out our Watchmen gallery below.

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Filed under: Action, Classics, Deals, Warner Brothers, Scripts, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels

There’s an interesting trend going on in film right now — everyone is grabbing up classic characters of pulp and adventure literature right and left. We’ve got Conan, Sherlock Holmes, John Carter, and now Tarzan. There’s a sociological study in here for an aspiring student.

Tarzan has seen many a reboot, and there’s always whispers of someone wanting to make a new version. This current project has been floating around since 2003 (the same year Warner Bros tried to bring Tarzan to television and the modern city), and once boasted Guillermo del Toro’s name. Now, according to Variety, it has landed in the hands of Stephen Sommers, who is cowriting a script with Stuart Beattie. Beattie boasts some impressive credits, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Collateral, so the Lord of the Apes might be in quite capable hands.

But Sommers’ movies tend to fall a bit short of expectation, to put it kindly. And I mean it kindly, from someone who does actually own Van Helsing — I could write a long defense as to why, but it really just comes down to liking Hugh Jackman and David Wenham a lot. But, in my defense, I reportedly audibly booed the ending when I saw it at the theater, though I can’t remember if it was because they so visibly CGI’d pants on a naked post-werewolf Jackman, or the floating head of Kate Beckinsale. I think it was the floating head, but knowing me, it may have been the pants.

So, while I want to think about how cool a new Tarzan movie could be, what hot dude they’ll put in a loincloth, how feisty Jane will be, I can’t. Because I’m picturing the whole thing saddled with the same CGI Sommers has used since The Mummy, a jungle peppered with apes that can stretch their jaws for miles. Am I wrong, readers?

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Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand, Steven Spielberg, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Games and Game Movies

While you suffer through those back to school blues …

Guitar Hero: The Movie — I have to start with this one. Have to! Because not only are we talking about a possible big-screen movie based on the popular video game, but we’re also about to tell you who wants to direct the thing. Can you guess? Here’s a hint: It’s not Uwe Boll. And if it’s not Boll, it has to be … Ratner! YES! (I really do think I love this maniac in a totally platonic, yet sadistic way — sorta how you love a great movie villain.) Anyway, Brett Ratner tells MTV that he’d love to make a Guitar Hero movie, possibly about “a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.” Ratner adds, “I would love to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie, if Activision would ever let me. I’m trying to convince them, but why would you have a movie screw up such a huge franchise? Not that I would make a bad movie. So that would be cool, to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie. ” I’m leaving this one to you, folks — have at it!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: In case you’re interested in seeing what a standard Persian-esque set looks like, Korben.info has put up a few select shots (see one above) of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time set. Based on the popular video game (hurray for themes in posts!), Prince of Persia stars Jake “I didn’t know he was Persian” Gyllenhaal as a young prince who teams up with a hottie princess (Gemma Arterton) to stop an evil ruler from doing evil things.

A director has been chosen to remake Poltergeist and Cinematical says we likey him … after the jump …

Continue reading Fanboy Bites: ‘Persia’ Pics, ‘Poltergeist’ Remake and ‘Guitar Hero: The Movie’??

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Filed under: Action, New Releases, Lionsgate Films, Movie Marketing, Remakes and Sequels

In advance of its release last week, Disaster Movie was slammed for the insensitivy of its release date — on the third anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters in history. (Hurricane Gustav narrowly avoided adding injury to insult.) Probably for a variety of reasons, audiences stayed away in droves, as Eugene noted. Now Bangkok Dangerous, the only wide release scheduled for this week, finds itself overtaken by current events. What else do the two apparent stinkers have in common? Lionsgate, their US distributor.

Lionsgate must pride itself on its highly-targeted slate being critic-proof, since it maximizes profits by skipping most advance screenings for critics and relying entirely on a blitkreig of advertising to fill theaters on opening weekend before word of mouth can spread. In fact, they informed publications some time ago that no advance press screenings for Bangkok Dangerous would be held. As Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend commented when reporting on the notice: “Not screened for the press almost always means the movie is so bad even the people who made it know the film is awful.”

Cinematical will post a review later this week, after it opens. But advance word — and current events — make the movie sound like another disaster for Lionsgate.

Continue reading ‘Bangkok [Not So] Dangerous’?

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Filed under: Action, RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

It’s definitely no secret that writer Mark Millar is a wanted man these days (or at least he wants you to believe he’s a wanted man), what with his comic series Wanted doing very well in theaters and another series of his, Kick-Ass, about to start production — not to mention all this talk of the guy possibly taking over the Superman franchise from a writing and creative standpoint. We’ll get to the latter in just a second, but first up there’s Wanted … and Wanted 2 … and, wait, Wanted 3, too?

In an interview with Newsarama, Millar spoke about how much he’s participating in the Wanted follow-up … and it would seem like he only gave the studio a “very small amount for a story, and that will be used as a basic story that they can build from.” He adds, “It will be some of the stuff that we didn’t utilize from the first book for the movie - like chapters three and four - there will be some stuff from that, so in the loosest sense it will be based on the book, but only very little.” Millar also noted that both part two and part three are greenlit, and that James McAvoy is indeed signed on to reprise his role in both sequels.

Hear what Millar has to say about his proposed seven-hour, Lord of the Rings-like Superman trilogy after the jump …

Continue reading Millar Talks ‘Wanted’ Sequel(s) and Superman Trilogy

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Filed under: Action, Drama, Casting, Mystery & Suspense, RumorMonger, Fandom, Remakes and Sequels

Well, darn! I no more than got to ponder this item from Australia’s Herald Sun than it was debunked from England. The Sun was reporting that Russell Crowe was all set to play Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, instantly making Watson ten times more interesting than he’s ever been allowed to be onscreen.

But just as all movie writers began pondering how incredibly brilliant it would be to see Crowe and Robert Downey Jr. pair up onscreen, perhaps as the Riggs and Murtaugh of Victorian London, it was dismissed entirely by none other than Guy Ritchie.

Ritchie was out doing red carpet duty for RocknRolla in London, when Empire asked him all about it. I’m kind of imagining a funny exercise in time difference here, where premiere reporters were being texted “Russ. C 2 be in Shlock Hlms?” from their Oz cousins just as Ritchie got out of his limo. Ritchie denied it all. “I don’t have a Watson. Somebody just told me that I have Russell Crowe lined up but that’s news to me. I suspect that hasn’t happened and I’m still looking for my Watson.” (I vote Paul Bettany. I guess he’s becoming a bit of a smart sidekick cliche, but he would be really good.)

Filming is set to start in a month, so expect an Inglorious Bastards-like flurry of casting news. According to Susan Downey, producer of RocknRolla and owner of Robert, the story is all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, and yet none. “The world is within all the stories and it actually goes back to the books but the story is actually one that we made for the movie. What we can tell you is that he’s a badass in this movie alright. That’s what we’re going back to, any Holmes fan that we’ve spoken to is getting really excited about this one.”

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Filed under: Action, Comedy, Thrillers, Obits, Trailers and Clips

In a world where one man used his distinctive voice to lend gravitas and then some to trailer after feature after episode, it really is a shame to see Don LaFontaine pass away at the age of 68. According to ET Online, LaFontaine died due to complications from a collapsed lung.

This video above pretty much summarizes what an impact this man had on modern moviegoing, and it helps to be reminded that there was a genuine personality behind his very particular talent, a notion that his official website only reinforces in spades. Whether it was a Geico spot or the Big Momma’s House 2 trailer, his booming delivery will remain imitated (as witnessed after the jump, in what is perhaps the only funny moment from “Frank TV“), but only because it was so iconic.

Continue reading Don LaFontaine, “King of Voiceovers”, Dies at 68

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Filed under: Action, Comedy, RumorMonger, Distribution, Toronto International Film Festival

If I know our Eugene Novikov at all, his face is like mine in that it registers somewhere between the two pictured at the right when it comes to the news that The Brothers Bloom, writer-director Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his nifty noir Brick, has been bumped back from October 24th (an admittedly crowded weekend) to a limited bow on December 19th, followed by a wide release on January 16th of 2009.

When the fairly reliable Box Office Mojo first mentioned the change, I balked at the thought, but now Johnson has confirmed it on his own message board, saying “There were a few reasons for the move: October and November are crowded as hell, it’s a tough tough market, especially for a smart unique film like ours, and we’d have a week or two at the most to sink or swim. Whereas concentrating on a couple markets for awards consideration in December, then pushing the wide in the more open January slot just seemed like a better use of resources.”

Wait — what’s that? Eugene gets to see it in a week’s time up at Toronto? Excuse me, but I’m suddenly feeling much more like Bang Bang…

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