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!
As they say, the devil is in the details. And as you can see by this interview, Neill Blomkamp put an incredible amount of detail into building the world of Elysium. Therefore, Neill Blomkamp must be the devil, right? Sound logic, if I’ve ever heard it.
Whether you love him or hate him and want to introduce his face to a cheese grater and some lemon juice for his “ending” on Lost, there’s no denying the success of screenwriter Damon Lindelof. So are you are fledgling writer that wants to mimic his success? Want to know his blockbuster writing secret? Write porn – “destruction porn” – even if you don’t like it.
“We live in a commercial world, where you’ve gotta come up with ‘trailer moments’ and make the thing feel big and impressive and satisfying, especially in that summer-movie-theater construct. But ultimately I do feel—even as a purveyor of it—slightly turned off by this destruction porn that has emerged and become very bold-faced this past summer. And again, guilty as charged. It’s hard not to do it, especially because a movie, if properly executed, feels like it’s escalating.”
So it looks like current UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey will have to start splitting her time between tearing people’s limb off and working on her ability to walk away from explosions really cool.. The current Queen of Women’s MMA was cast in old-man-palooza The Expendables 3 recently, and now she’s expanding her action heroine credentials by swapping zimmer frames for sports cars as she’s just joined the cast of Fast & Furious 7.
Thanks to EW we have our first look at George Clooney’s star studded WWII true-story art caper, The Monuments Men. The ensemble cast sees Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and John Goodman as a special platoon put together by Franklin Roosevelt to go behind enemy lines and steal back confiscated art pieces to return to their rightful owners. It’s like Ocean’s Eleven, only with more Nazis and trench rot.
Leonardo DiCaprio wants to rape and pillage and there’s nothing that’s going to stop him. He would have starred in Mel Gibson’s proposed Viking movie before it fell apart thanks to Gibson apparently hating the world, but now it looks like he may get his wish thanks to Warner Bros. The studio has picked up King Harald, a pitch that writer Mark L. Smith is currently busy writing. DiCaprio’s Appian Way would produce and he’s also looking to star in the historical tale about Harald Hardrada, the 11th Century Norse leader known as the last great Viking king, who ruled over “Norway for two decades, but his quest for power and thirst for battle led to his being exiled for a time to Russia and then returning in triumph.”
According to the geeks at MTV, what the new Star Wars movies need is some Lumiya. No, I don’t mean they need more Nokia smartphones.
English folk rock band Mumford and Sons have a new music video out for their latest song “Hopeless Wanderer”. Except, that ain’t them in the video. Look carefully and you’ll see that that role of the bands are being played by funnymen Jason Sudeikis (Marcus Mumford), Will Forte (Ted Dwane), Jason Bateman (Winston Marshall) and Ed Helms (Ben Lovett).
There’s a giant Harry Potter shaped hole in the Warner Bros film lineup after the record breaking saga came to a close a while back, but the studio are look to fill it with another magical character. WB have apparently hired Game of Thrones writer Dave Hill and Hanna scribe David Farr to work on the screenplay for a new tentpole franchise starter about classic Arthurian magician Merlin. There’s no official word on exactly what the story will be about or whether he will wear a stainless steel skullcap, but speculation is that the franchise will be based on TA Barron’s five-part young adult series, “The Lost Years of Merlin” – which WB acquired the rights to two years ago – that focuses on the famed magician’s youth.
After director Seth Gordon steered Horrible Bosses to becoming a decent box office hit in 2011, there was immediate talk of a sequel. Unfortunately, that sequel’s development has been moving slower than a sloth on crutches, and now that it finally looks like the development is getting somewhere, Gordon has decided to bail on the whole thing. According to the reports, scheduling conflict is to blame and not just Gordon showing his cast what true method acting was all about by being a horrible boss.
Last week we showed you the first official pics from David O. Russell’s American Hustle and at the time I made an awkward joke about staring at Amy Adams’ cleavage. Please refer to that joke again for this latest pic as well.
Next time you want to impress some ladies, learn how to use deodorant, move out of your parents’ house and buy a Ferrari (You taking notes, Darryn?). If that doesn’t work, maybe you could try dazzling them with your movie trivia knowledge, like this rather surprising list of names of The 10 Highest Grossing Box Office Stars Who Have Never Made a Sequel. Know what would also be surprising? If that tactic actually worked.
So we’ve already from The Lone Ranger lead actors Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer and director Gore Verbinski how it was all those conniving, dastardly, no good critics’ fault Mark that the film flopped to the very painful tune of possibly $190 million. Mark Wahlberg disagrees though. He has a different reason for why The Lone Ranger is a box-office bust: really expensive horses.
“They’re spending $250 million for two dudes on a horse? Where’s the money going?”
Okay, so maybe there is a hell of a lot more to The Lone Ranger, but according to most reviewers, that seems to be the actual problem with the film. Something that Wahlberg agrees with.
“They are spending so much money to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes with these effects-driven movies. It’s not like Jurassic Park, where you saw something groundbreaking and innovative and said ‘Holy … I gotta see that.’ Every end-of-the-Earth movie kind of feels the same.”
“That’s tough talk for someone about to star in a Transformers sequel [but] Transformers is a different thing. What Michael’s been able to do is elevate the material and take the human element to a whole other place. Having the father-daughter relationship [that Wahlberg’s character figures into] is so much more interesting.”
Ah, Marky Mark. I was right there with you right up until you started using “Transformers” and “human element” in the same breath. Laughable claims aside though, Wahlberg did make one perfectly correct statement about Michael Bay that Gore Verbinski could definitely learn from: The dude knows how to work with money.
“Michael Bay isn’t going to be in a situation where a movie is $100 million over budget. I’ve never seen anyone that can manage the entire thing so single-handedly and seamlessly.”
While the bat-fight for the right to wear the cowl continues, you can sate your bat needs so long with this trailer for the very on-the-nose named fan film, Batman vs Terminator. Animator Mitchell Hammond has been working on the short film by himself since 2010, and can now finally unveil some footage for it, which actually looks kind of cool. Expect the final film sometime later this year.
Last Updated: August 8, 2013
