Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!
Remember a while back, I mentioned that director James Cameron would be teaming up with Mythbusters to finally, once and for all, shut up all the naysayers who insist that it was completely unnecessary for Jack to die at the end of Titanic if Rose had just had the common decency to scooch over a little on the door they were clinging to? Yeah, well it didn’t quite go as Cameron had planned.
Microsoft have revealed that acclaimed director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) will serve as producer while visual effects maestro Tim Miller (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) will direct the new trailer for highly anticipated video game Halo 4. The 2 minute long extended trailer, which will offer some backstory for the game’s protagonist, Master Chief, will debut on the Jimmy Fallon Show on October 18th.
The Vince Vaughn comedy Starbuck will now be known as Oh my god not another Vince Vaughn “comedy” where he plays the same obnoxious man child like in all his other movies The Delivery Man. The film is a remake of a Canadian comedy, and deals with a deadbeat adult man who discovers that as a sperm donor using the alias “Starbuck”, he’s fathered 500 children.
Following on from the news of Nate Parker’s casting earlier in the week, it’s been revealed that Julianne Moore will also be joining Liam Neeson up in the sky for the action thriller Non-Stop. This will actually reteam her and Neeson with director Jaume Collet-Serra after they both starred in 2011’s Unknown.
Thanks to some new set pics for The Wolverine, we get our first look at Russian actress Svetlana Khodchenkova (say that three times fast) in costume as the vivacious and villainous vixen Viper (say that three times drunk!). Hit the link for more pics.
So, breaking news: The internet is filled with douchebags. Who woulda thunk it? After JJ Abrams revealed those 3 frames of footage from Star Trek Into Darkness earlier in the week, it somehow started a chain reaction of loud mouthed idiocy, as “fans” hurled grammatically incorrect barbs at Abrams for not giving them the movie want now. In typical Abrams fashion he said nothing, but that was not the case for screenwriter Roberto Orci.
Here’s the particular trollish rant that got him to speak up:
“The fact remains that JJ took time off to do Super 8 which affected the production of Star Trek sequel. It is almost 6 months before the movie come out & no marketing whatsoever to promote the movie. No poster, teaser, trailer, viral marketing or official website !!! Only the unimaginative title was released. You guys need to step your game up & fast.”
Ooh. He used 3 exclamation points at one time. This dude is for real. Here’s Orci’s response, which is lot more civil and a lot less filled with details about the troll’s mother’s anatomy than I would have made it:
“Classic. you essentially are saying, “You’ve given us nothing! Except for that one thing you gave us — the title – and I hate it!” I guess you will have to show me the marketing handbook you are using to question our schedule. Appreciate that you wanna see things ASAP. Delayed gratification is not a strong characteristic of some folks. I get it. All I can say is: relax. the movie is gonna melt your face right off. Your eyeballs are going to bleed. And you’ll thank us;)”
Uma Thurman is the latest high profile actor/actress to prove that Hollywood bigwigs are not afraid of a little hardcore graphic sex scenes in a movie, as she will be joining what will undoubtedly be the controversial erotic drama, Nymphomaniac, from director Lars Von Trier. She will potentially be dropping trou with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Stacy Martin, Connie Nielsen and in a huge case of “Where the hell did he come from?”, Christian Slater.
With critical and commercial sci-fi smash Looper now finally beginning to open outside of the US of A, the film just got this fantastic retro international poster. And no, this isn’t just a scan of something I had crumpled in my back pocket, those crease marks are all part of the design.
Ah, studios. When will you learn to stop meddling? John Landis, famed 80’s director and father of Max Landis, the hyperactive scribe behind smash hit Chronicle, was talking The Playlist about the difficulties he’s had in getting some of his films made, when he happened to mention that his son was going through something similar right now.
[Max] wrote a sequel and it’s amazing… and the studio read it and said, ‘We want ‘Chronicle’ again!’ And he said, ‘No, this is the sequel, it’s the evolution, and they said ‘No, we want that movie again!’ So it’s difficult, we’re dealing with a difficult business.’
Now understandably, Landis senior might just have some Proud Daddy blinkers on, and the script is actually stalling because it’s crap, but from past experiences, I’d be inclined to believe him.
Diminutive funnyman Danny DeVito may currently be going through a divorce, but he’s already thinking about a honeymoon. Honeymoon With Dad, that is. DeVito will be directing the comedy which sees a young who, after being left at the altar by his wife to be, ends up going on his honeymoon holiday with his father.
This new poster for Gangster Squad may not have names, badges or mercy but it sure as hell has a lot of shapely Emma Stone leg. And names. Turns out it actually does have names.
It looks like that Van Helsing reboot – written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci with Tom Cruise in the lead – might have found its director in the form of Rupert Sanders. The Snow White and the Huntsman helmer is apparently eyeing the project rather closely. If he does get on board though, it would probably not leave place in his schedule to direct the Snow White sequel. I sent an email off to Sanders’ wife for comment, but she couldn’t type a response with all the finger crossing she was doing.
Speaking of the Hunstman, Chris Hemsworth has been offered the lead role in Traitor director Jeffrey Nachmanoff ‘s next action thriller American Assassin, but no word yet on whether he will take it. The film follows the story of CIA agent Mitch Rapp and how he goes from gifted college scholar/athlete to highly skilled government assassin.
It’s not often that you get trailer for short films, but that’s exactly what FX guru Stephan Zlotescu did for his short film True Skin earlier in the year. His gamble paid off, as the eye catching visuals in the trailer generated some great buzz, including praise from famed cyberpunk author William Gibson. Well, now the full short film has finally been released, and I think it’s safe to say to that it lived up to it’s promise.
The film is set in a future rife with body augmentation, but when our story’s protagonist can’t afford the upgrade he wants he heads to Bangkok for a black market alternative. There he comes into possession of a mysterious chip, that has some strange robotics side-effects, and soon finds himself on the run from shadowy organizations who want the chip for themselves.
Zlotescu – who’s done music video work for the likes of Lady Gaga and Kanye West – directed the film on location in Bangkok, along with his frequent collaborators Chris Sewall and H1 (collectively, they’re called N1ON) in the hopes of generating enough interest for a full length feature adaptation. Somehow, I get the feeling that may just be happening sometime soon.
Last Updated: October 11, 2012
