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!
I’m pretty sure we had a TV spot for director Dan Bradley’s Red Dawn remake just the other day, but hey, here’s another one. This new clip is slightly less explodey though.
John Cusack is reportedly going to star in the long-in-development adaptation of the Stephen King zombie story, Cell. The film tells the tale of a man, who amid a zombie apocalypse, sets out on a journey across country to find his wife and son. The twist? The zombie outbreak was brought on and spread by a mysterious signal broadcast on all cellular phones. We’ve of course already seen that signal in real life. It’s called MXit.
Eli Roth was once attached to the project as director, but that no longer seems to be the case. No replacement director has been announced.
Up and coming actress Imogen Poots’ career may be moving at a rapid pace at the moment, but apparently she needs even more speed. The Fright Night remake actress will soon be seen in both A Late Quartet and Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups but after that she’ll be joining the previously announced Aaron Paul in a big screen adaptation of popular racing game Need for Speed. Poots will be playing as an exotic car dealer for the rich and famous.
With the Evil Dead remake stealing all the headlines lately, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Sam Raimi has another film on the horizon, and this one he’s actually directing not just producing. Serving as a reminder that Oz the Great and Powerful is still around, here’s a new poster giving us our first real look at the infamous Wicked Witch of the West. As to who’ll be donning the prosthetic nose, that’s still a mystery, as neither Mila Kunis or Rachel Weisz have confirmed which witch they’d be playing. My money’s on Kunis though.
So this morning, Lourens mentioned in his Star Wars article that Mark Hamill had apparently been aware of the plans for Episode VII since last August already. Well here’s Hamill talking to EW, where he explains in his own words what happened:
“[George Lucas] asked Carrie [Fisher] and I to have lunch with him and we did. I thought he was going to talk about either his retirement or the ‘Star Wars’ TV series that I’ve heard about — which I don’t think we were going to be involved in anyway, because that takes place between the prequels and the ones we were in and, if Luke were in them, he’d be anywhere from a toddler to a teenager so they’d get an age-appropriate actor — or the 3-D releases. So when he said, ‘We decided we’re going to do Episodes VII, VIII, and IX,” I was just gobsmacked. “What? Are you nuts?!” [Laughs]”
“I can see both sides of it. Because in a way, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end and we all lived happily ever after and that’s the way it should be — and it’s great that people have fond memories, if they do have fond memories. But on the other hand, there’s this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material. It’s one of those things: people either just don’t care for it or are passionate about it. I guess that defines what cult movies are all about.
And I know this is a tough request, but please try to maintain some respect and not laugh at this bit of news. Please. IMDB is reporting that due to all the devastation caused by superstorm Sandy in America, the production on Darren Aranofsky’s Noah has been halted. Due to flooding. Don’t laugh!
So did any of you go out trick or treating last night? Because I can guarantee that were you dressed like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was, you’d get all the candy. The actor revealed his Hulk costume on twitter last night.
“Don’t make angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” ~ The People’s Hulk
#HappyHalloween
THR is reporting that “any decision on Ghostbusters III, the long, long gestating sequel, has been postponed until the end of March — this after Men in Black 3 writer Etan Cohen was paid a huge sum for a script. Shooting was to begin next summer but now couldn’t start before fall at best.”
C’mon, Cohen. Work for your money.
If you’ve been trying to calculate just how many flannel check shirts George Lucas will be buying with the $4,05 billion paycheque he got from the sale of Lucasfilms, you’ll be interested to hear that the answer is actually not as much as you would think. A Lucasfilms spokesperson has revealed to THR that Lucas is planning on donating the majority of that money to various charities.
This of course is living up to Lucas’ 2010 pledge:
“I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race.”
Good on ya, George!
The Quentin Tarantino archives has scored a batch of new images for Django Unchained, including our first look at Don Johnson . Hey, if they should ever make a Kentucky Fried Chicken biopic, at least we now know who to call. Head over here to see the rest of the pics.
Horror anthology V/H/S has not even had its international release yet, but they’re already assembling a group of top drawer talent for its sequel, imaginatively titled V/H/S 2. The Raid director Gareth Evans will get the chance to show that he can do more than just breakneck action, as he’ll direct one of the film’s sequences. He’ll be joined by a number of previously announced filmmakers including Blair Witch Project and Lovely Molly director Eduardo Sanchez and Hobo With A Shotgun’s Jason Eisener.
Vince Vaughn is going to take a break from starring in comedies where plays the same obnoxious man-child characters, to star in a new action thriller, Triple Time, which will see him as a US Marshall who gets attacked while transporting an environmental terrorist to Washington DC, forcing the two men to work together as they figure out what’s going on. Also, he’ll probably be an obnoxious man-child US Marshall.
An official synopsis has been revealed for Woman in Black: The Angel of Death, the sequel to the Daniel Radcliffe starring surprise smash hit. Radcliffe and none of the other principal members of the production will be returning though.
Seized by the government and converted into a military mental hospital during World War II, the sudden arrival of disturbed soldiers to Eel Marsh Harsh has awoken its darkest inhabitant. Eve, a beautiful young nurse, is sent to the house to care for the patients but soon realizes she must save them from more than their own demons. Despite Eve’s efforts to stop her, one by one they fall victim to the Woman in Black
The guys at ShockTillYouDrop have spotted this promo artwork for the film at the AFM festival, where it will soon be playing.
Karl “The Law” Urban will be joining with The Hunger Games actress Willow “Katniss’ sister” Shields and Chinese actor Leehom “None of you know who I am, but I have a funny last name” Wang for a new 3D fantasy film titled The Wonder. The film tells the tale of “14-year-old Rachel (Shields) who, together with two of her classmates, find the end of a rainbow which, magically, transports them to…”
Now at this point if you had said “a pot of gold”, or maybe even “Oz” I would completely understand. What you probably weren’t expecting to see was that the rainbow transports them to “…China. There, they find themselves pursued by local authorities and a mysterious organisation. With unexpected help from Consul William Stanley (Urban), the kids are able to elude their chasers but soon discover that their journey has triggered a major natural disaster. Together with their new friend Cheng (Wang), they find their way back home but still need to race against time to stop the global catastrophe.”
Rainbows. Now made in China.
It’s pretty well known that the Lord of the Rings films are pretty big business over in New Zealand. With the film location becoming a major tourist hotspot, you probably can’t go anywhere being confronted by promo images of hobbits, elves and dwarves. Just last week we reported how the visual effects wizards over at WETA have erected a totally not creepy gigantic animatronic Gollum in the entrance to the Wellington airport.
And if you’re one the unlucky ones that find yourself getting freaked out by short people with hairy feet, or pointy eared snob, you may just think that once you made it onto your plane to leave the country that you’d be safe. You’d be wrong. Very wrong, my precious. All thanks to this new safety campaign by Air New Zealand.
Last Updated: November 1, 2012
