Home Entertainment Extras! Josh Gad could be a fantastic thing, Elizabeth Banks is pitching perfect, Justin Lin faces a Toymageddon, and JJ Abrams talks (or doesn't) Star Wars secrecy! Plus much more!

Extras! Josh Gad could be a fantastic thing, Elizabeth Banks is pitching perfect, Justin Lin faces a Toymageddon, and JJ Abrams talks (or doesn't) Star Wars secrecy! 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!

If you followed me on Facebook or Twitter last year, then every Sunday morning you would probably find my status update to read something like “OMFG!!!! ATTACK ON TITAN!!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!”, give or take a few exclamation points. The anime Attack on Titan was easily one of the best in years, and has subsequently gained massive popularity, to the point where talk of a live action feature film adaptation started popping up. Just how would a live action Attack on Titan actually look? Well, thanks to this Subaru ad, we may just have an idea.

If you were worried that Pitch Perfectwould be coming down with an acute case of bad-sequelitis, then here’s something that should keep the hope alive that we’ll get a film that lives up to the feel good fun of the first film. Elizabeth Banks, who not only produced but also played the hilarious commentator Gail in the first film, has officially signed on to direct the sequel. This will be Banks’s feature film directorial debut, and will also see the return of stars Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson, and will once again be written by Kay Cannon.

So er… Anybody in the market for an used dinosaur cage? Seriously. The original velociraptor cage prop used in the opening sequence of Jurassic Park has popped up for sale on Ebay, and currently you’ll only need to bid more than $99 900.10 for it to be yours. Wait, WHAT?! Just under a hundred grand for a box?!

With all its awards buzz (and parody-worthy elements), you may eagerly be waiting for Spike Jonze’s Her to hit local shores on 21 February. If that’s far too long of a wait for you, then I have something to help pass the time, as the film’s entire soundtrack – composed by Grammy Award winning Arcade Fire – is now available online for your listening pleasure.

Justin Lin knows a thing or two about making toys cool (and profitable). I mean he took a walking action figure in Vin Diesel and along with some Hot Wheels inspiration turned the Fast and Furious franchise into the box-office mega-behemoth that is today. And now he may just have to do it with toys, for real. Lin has signed on to produce Toymageddon for 20th Century Fox, and the project is being described as “a four quadrant, live-action family adventure movie in the vein of Jurassic Park and Ghostbusters.” The plot, which is based on a concept by Tariq Merhab, is being kept mostly under wraps, but “is known to center around a toy factory that runs amok.”

Fox is currently on the hunt for a writer and depending how the script turns out, Lin may end up directing as well.

Mark Hamill has done an AMA on Reddit, and had some pretty amazing things to talk about. If you don’t want to wade through the tonne of comments though, CinemaBlend is here to your rescue as they have rounded up 13 Fascinating Things We Learned About Mark Hamill During His AMA.

We’ve seen a couple funny parodies of “Let it Go”, the Oscar nominated original song from Disney’s Frozen, so far. Some of them have been funny, some of them have been bad, but we’re about to witness/suffer through what is undoubtedly the most ridiculous. Youtuber 2ChinTV, making use of an impersonator, has gone and done a version that sees Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze singing his own version of the song. Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Yes, it may just be better than the Batman & Robin.

Speaking of Frozen… There’s a rumour going around, supposedly originating from “within casting circles close to the film”, that Josh Gad, who voiced the snowman Olaf in Disney’s animated feature film, is currently Fox’s top pick for the role of Benjamin Grimm aka The Thing in director Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot.

Although Gad, who also played Steve Wozniak in Jobs, is actually of the right physical stature to play the rock skinned character, it’s believed that this reboot won’t be repeating the rubber costume mistakes of the first film and will instead be going with an all CG character. If the rumour is true, Gad would be providing the voice and motion capture, and based on his good voicework in Frozen I’m intrigued by what he could bring to the role, despite not having the naturally gruff voice The Thing normally possesses.

Damn it. Just when I had decided to give up on the second season of Under the Dome, after screaming my last scream at a cast of characters whose collective IQ was potato, they had to just go and announce that Stephen King himself will be penning the season 2 premier.

While everybody knows the recently deceased James Avery as Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, not many know that he was actually the voice of Shredder in the classic 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. There are actually several of these celeb actors who lent their voice talents to cartoons, and some of them in this list from Screenjunkies are rather surprising.

It was nearly exactly a year ago that the news broke that JJ Abrams would be directing Star Wars: Episode VII. A year later and here’s what we now know for sure about the highly anticipated film: JJ Abrams will be directing Star Wars: Episode VII. The Star Trek director has always made a name for himself on secrecy and subterfuge when it came to his work, but the anti-news that has surrounded this film has reached an all new high. And yet, according to Abrams, Star Wars is a lot less secretive than some of his other works, especially the recent Star Trek Into Darkness which too a lot of flak for the non-reveal of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan.

“We were trying to preserve the unexpected for the audience, but it came across as if we were trying to be too clever. Star Wars is in every way a different animal. It’s always been a more open, fan-engaged universe than I’ve been used to, so I’m sure there’ll be some sort of compromise. But it feels to me like there’s a purity in not knowing every little thing.”

Er… I think Mr Abrams needs to look up the term “compromise” in the dictionary, because while I definitely don’t want him to just start screening a Reader’s Digest version of the entire film as a trailer, we need to at least have learnt something by now.

And on the topic of trailers that give away too much, NATO – that’s the National Association of Theatre Owners, who represent over 31 000 cinema screens in the USA and additional cinema houses in 78, not those other guys – have released a set of voluntary “in-theatre marketing guidelines” which they hope will be adopted by the big movie studios. These guidelines – which as the name implies is not mandatory – call for “a maximum trailer length of two minutes; and marketing lead-time is limited to 150 days/5 months prior to release date for trailers and 120 days/4 months for all other in-theatre marketing materials (i.e. lobby posters, stands, etc.)”.

These guidelines are to combat the annoying problem of studios releasing lengthy trailers that give away a film’s entire plot. For those extra special movies though, these guidelines allow for 2 exceptions to the trailer length and marketing lead time limit per distributor per year.

While these guidelines – which are set to take effect on October 1, 2014 –  will be entirely voluntary, I pray to every deity I can think of (Hallelujah, Flying Spaghetti Monster! Hallelujah!) that this gets adopted.

If you’ve seen Thor: The Dark World – and judging by box office numbers, then I’m guessing that a lot of you have – then you will know that one of the funniest scenes was when Tom Hiddleston’s Loki engages in a series of shapeshifting in order to find the best appearance to use while escaping Asgard. At one point he shapeshifts in a certain Avenger with hilarious results, and while in the final cut of the film, director Alan Taylor simply had the original actor do a cameo, that’s not how it was shot, as you can see below.

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: January 28, 2014

One Comment

  1. But the raptor cage INCLUDES A FULL-SIZE RAPTOR FOR ONLY R1MILLION!

    Reply

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