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!
- So have you picked your jaw up from the floor yet after watching the last trailer for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity? You really should, especially since it’s probably lying in a puddle of urine also brought on by the gut wrenching cinematography of said trailer. While you refill your bladder in anticipation of that film’s release, have a gander at this just as impressive Comic-Con trailer for Believe, the new NBC drama series executive produced by Cuaron and JJ “I rule all the geeks” Abrams. Cuaron will be directing the pilot episode and as can be seen by the space-defying camerawork in the beginning of this clip will be up to his filmmaking voodoo again.
- After the massive success of movies like the last Fast and Furious,Vin Diesel is one of the world’s most wanted leading men. Literally. The gravel-voiced muscleman has signed on to play the lead in a new action thriller, World’s Most Wanted, which will see him flex his muscles and talk in a deep voice. Also, probably be bald. If you haven’t figured it out by now yet, we actually have no idea what World’s Most Wanted will actually be about, we do know that Dan Mazeau, the guy most recently tapped to pen Tom Cruise’s Yukikaze, will be providing a new draft of the script based on original story pitchers, Will Staples & Sean O’Keefe’s original draft.
- Speaking of Diesel’s bald head and gravelly voice, both are in display in this newly released Riddick motion comic – which serves as a means to bridging the gap between Chronicles of Riddick and the upcoming film, meaning you definitely want to watch this – which was shown off at Comic-Con but now has been made available to us Comic-Con-less plebs. Along with this,comes a beastly new still from the film, released as part of Universal Pictures’ new “Furyan Fridays” Twitter campaign.
- 3:10 To Yuma and The Mechanic Star Ben Foster is currently in talks to lose a nut, take lots of drugs and then lie to people about it. Yes, he will be playing the title role in Stephen “The Queen” Frears’s still unnamed Lance Armstrong biopic. The film is set to “tell the story of Armstrong’s battle with testicular cancer in the mid-1990s to the unraveling of his image in the last several years due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.”
I think I said it with more panache.
- You guys have got just under a year and a half to sort out all your health insurance policies, as you’re clearly going to need them when you start experiencing random, awesomeness-induced heart failure in about 17 months. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then read HitFix’s article on the 23 Films That Make 2015 The Greatest Movie Year Ever
- Two new posters are out for Paul “The Bourne Ultimatum” Greengrass’ new Tom Hanks starring thriller Captain Phillips: This Is For Wilson. Okay, so maybe I added that title suffix, but damn it, somebody needs to go on a quest to find that loveable volleyball!
- Indian actor Jagdish Raj passed away this weekend at the age of 84. While I have a feeling that not too many of you would know his name offhand, if you’re a Bollywood fan, then chances are you’ve seen him before. Specifically, seen him do one thing. See, Jagdish Raj was officially the world’s most typecast actor, playing the role of a policeman in a record breaking 144 movies during his 21-year long career.
- Gareth Edwards sure loves monsters. His big directing debut was of course called – what else – Monsters, and the success of that landed him the gig of bringing to screen a new version of arguably the most famous movie monster in Godzilla. And while Edwards was chatting to Screenrant over the weekend about all things nuclear powered and lizard-like, he hinted at perhaps using one of his favourite monster movies as potential Godzilla sequel.
“With the exception of the 1954 original, I would say my second favorite film is Destroy All Monsters. I just love the idea of a monster island. Having a world with these creatures in it. I find that fascinating and would like to treat that realistically. I wouldn’t want to limit it to one other foe, I think it’s more fun to – this question will come back to haunt me if we ever do a sequel – but I think multiple creatures make better movies in terms of the image of Gojira.”
Destroy All Monsters was a monster-palooza that saw several giant beasties go head to head. And after the monstrous insanity of Pacific Rim, I am all up for that. Especially since it seems that Edwards and co are definitely looking to keep the original designs of these beasts, saying that the glimpses we’ve seen so far of Godzilla is actually not the final version. Instead of modelling the monster after Reese Witherspoon’s chin like Roland Emmerich did with his 1998 version, Edwards took the classic rubber-suit monster’s look, and just tried to make it real.
“In a way we approached it was, imagine in 1954 (when the first Godzilla movie was made), that this creature really existed and someone saw him from Toho, the Japanese studio, and went running back to the studio and said, ‘I’ve seen this creature and it kind of looked like this.’ And they tried to draw it and they tried to make a suit and they did a very good job of it but then, when you saw the real creature, you go ‘Okay, I totally understand how you got that suit from that creature but now I see the real thing. Oh my God, I totally believe that it’s completely real.’ And that’s how we approached it. We went through hundreds of designs, and never stopped playing really until the last minute and got to the point where it was like, ‘Is there anything else that we want to change about this design’? And I was like, personally no, I’m very happy with it. And Toho was very much a part of the approval process. So it’s a Toho approved design as well.”
- You know where Hercules kept his army? Up his sleevey!…………… Hello?….. Anybody?…………………. Okay, sorry. That joke was really lame. To make up for it, here’s a new pic tweeted by Dwayne Johnson of his Thracian army in Brett Ratner’s upcoming Hercules.
“Let it be to death or victory. THANK U my ‘Thracian soldiers’. Intensity & energy #PreBattleSpeech”
- If you enjoy screaming at your TV, well then you should check out my gran watching her soaps (apparently, from what I’ve gleaned over the years, Brooke is a hussy, and Oubaas has winged words). If you want something with a bit more bloody and stabby knife action then MTV’s new Scream TV series, adapted from Wes Craven’s popular movie franchise, might just do the trick. After being announced a short while back, the show is finally seeing some traction as MTV have hired the Criminal Minds and Revenge writing duo of Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin to pen the series.
- Contrary to what Zod may preach, nobody likes to kneel, which is probably why we’ve seen so many people/things rising; from the Dark Knight, to the Planet of Apes. And next on the vertically mobile agenda is the Clown Prince of Crime in Joker Rising, a new R-Rated full-length feature film from Alek Gearhart of SmokingAlien3, focusing on Batman’s most famous foe. While the film is not yet completed, Gearhart and co have released this rough cut of the entire film, to show fans what they can be expecting. I hope they finish it up soon as this is actually pretty cool.
Last Updated: July 29, 2013
