Home Entertainment Extras! RIP Peter O'Toole, Neil Burger diverts from a franchise, Fox lights up Mark Millar's stars, Tom Hanks is a nice guy, and Star Wars is unscripted? Plus much more!

Extras! RIP Peter O'Toole, Neil Burger diverts from a franchise, Fox lights up Mark Millar's stars, Tom Hanks is a nice guy, and Star Wars is unscripted? Plus much more!

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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!

Unfortunately we have to get things under way today on a bit of a sombre note. Award winning veteran actor Peter O’Toole passed away over the weekend at the age of 81. O’Toole garnered several Golden Globes and Emmys throughout his career and was nominated for an Oscar eight times. He would never win the golden statue, but he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy in 2013.

O’Toole has a massive list of popular films/roles under his name, but it will always be his turn as the titular Lawrence of Arabia in director David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece for which he will be remembered most. O’Toole passed away in a London hospital, after battling illness for a long time.

And keeping things on the slightly macabre note, a rumour has surfaced that recently deceased actor Paul Walker’s brother, Cody Walker, may just be called in to help shoot some scenes to allow Universal to rescue the in-production Fast and Furious 7. Walker’s untimely death left the production in a bit of a bind, seeing as he had only filmed half his scenes and was critical to the rest of the story. According to the rumour, by using Cody Walker, who is a professional stuntman and bears enough resemblance to his older brother, to film new scenes where either close-ups aren’t required or some CGI trickery could be employed, director James Wan hopes to not have to completely scrap the existing script but rather just rework it slightly to incorporate Walker’s death into the plot. It would also be a rather nice tribute for Cody to pay to his brother.

At this point, Universal have refused to comment on the validity of the rumour.

And I think that’s enough tragedy for today. Okay, maybe a little bit more tragedy, as here’s the new trailer for The Legend of Hercules in which star Kellan Lutz’s “acting” still looks bad enough to make you cry.

And because I know these things keep you up at night, according to Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn, JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan has not yet turned in their new script for Star Wars: Episode VII. They are expecting to be done with it January though.

Also, there currently is no script for a fifth Indiana Jones movie as they just don’t have a story yet. And now you know.

We’ve been treated to quite a few superb action sequences in movies this year, from giant robots using freight ships as baseball bats to aliens punching each other’s faces through cities, to a couple of dwarves getting creative with some barrels (that last one, coincidentally, being how Darryn spends most of his Friday nights). The Playlist has rounded up their favourites for The 15 Best Action Sequences of 2013.

We’ve had a couple of trailers for 47 Ronin already, but in case you were completely bamboozled by the flashy set pieces and the fact that Keanu Reeves is supposed to be half-Japanese and thus ended up not paying attention, here’s a neat little animated prequel that sets up the film’s story.

I’m pretty sure that Lionsgate are hoping to duplicate the success of the Hunger Games franchise with upcoming YA adaptation Divergent, but somebody needs to tell them that they don’t need to copy everything verbatim. Much like with with Gary Ross and The Hunger Games, director Neil Burger has decided that he won’t be returning for the planned two sequels to Divergent, prompting the studio to once again kick off a scramble to find a replacement director for a high profile YA franchise.

The 2013 Black List is finally out and no, this is not a list of people who refuse to get e-Tags. The Black List is a collection of the most popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, as voted on by over 250 Hollywood execs. The Black List has been the source of several major films over the years, including Slumdog Millionaire and The Social Network among others.

And in perhaps some kind of portent about what the weird movie trend for next year will be, the list contains two separate scripts about the untold story of the making of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

Here are the first officially released pics for Wally Pfister’s techno-thriller Transcendence, which sees Johnny Depp as a scientist who uploads his consciousness into a computer mainframe. No, not just to play Farmville better, it’s actually as an escape route after he’s attacked by anti-technology activists.

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If Tom Hanks were to announce tomorrow that he wanted to become President of the World, I’m pretty sure that most people would just nod and ask why they didn’t think of such a splendid idea sooner. On top of being insanely talented, the guy just seems so nice. So nice, in fact, that he doesn’t even want to pretend to be bad.

“Look, playing bad, I am not interested, ever. I don’t want to see bad guys who are just bad, you know? Why are they bad?

“There are evil villains out there like, I don’t know, Iago, that are intriguing to play. But bad guys do not look bad – they look like you or me. You could have a knife in your shoe, you know?”

“[My ‘nice guy’ image really isn’t an act.] There’s no substitute for absolute, complete honesty. There are people out there that lie very easily. I refuse to accept that. If you lie to me, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

Looks like the House of Mouse is filled with cheddar, and I mean that in the hip hop vernacular. Disney has revealed that it’s reached a new all time high domestic box office take, having already surpassed its previous record of $1.547 billion set last year. Earlier in the year the company also set new international box office records, meaning that all those hundreds of millions spent on acquiring Marvel and Lucasfilm is looking like one incredibly sound investment right now.

Did you know that Mary Poppins is the best movie of all time? No, I didn’t either. And then I saw this video…

Comic book scribe Mark Millar may be all quiet (and possibly out of a job) on the whole Fox Creative Consultant front, but that doesn’t mean that he’s still not doing business with them. Millar’s latest comic title to be published by Image Comics, Starlight, has been picked up by 20th Century Fox for a feature film adaptation to be penned by Simon Kinberg. Yes, the guy that seems to be doing Millar’s job now for Fox. Awkward.

Now you may have noticed the “to be published” bit earlier, and that’s because the first issue of the book is only coming out next year March, but this is apparently how we roll now. Here’s the blurb for that first issue of the sci-fi title:

So much for retirement! Meet Duke McQueen, a man who has long since settled down and left his days of saving the Universe and operating as the space hero everyone depended on—at least that’s what he thought. His wife long passed and his kids off embarking on their own adventures, Duke lives a quiet, solitary life until he receives an unexpected call from a distant world, calling him to action one last time.

Did you know that if you were a male between the ages of 20 and 50 in the 1980’s, then there was probably about 70% chance that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to kill you. It’s true, Arnie just mowed down people every couple minutes back then. How many people you ask? Watch and find out, this video answers, as it provides a 28-minute long supercut of every kill in Arnie’s movie career. (You can skip to 26:42 to see the total tally and breakdown of kills).

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: December 17, 2013

7 Comments

  1. Nice one. Arnie is da king!

    Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      December 18, 2013 at 08:05

      GET TO DA CHOPPAAAAAAAA!

      Reply

      • RinceGivesRspectsToMadiba

        December 18, 2013 at 08:35

        John says he’s allowed to use it as her heard a ‘real’ chopper after you left… I am not so sure…

        Reply

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          December 18, 2013 at 08:46

          Nooooooo. He didn’t hear the REAL chopper which won me the rights, so if I wasn’t there to hear it then it doesn’t count.

          Reply

          • RinceGivesRspectsToMadiba

            December 18, 2013 at 08:54

            But, it’s all he’s got!

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            December 18, 2013 at 09:04

            If he’s sad he can cradle his PS4 ;P

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          December 18, 2013 at 08:47

          He still has “GET DOWNNNNN!”

          Reply

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