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!
Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara has been talking to the NY Times about what the studio has in the pipeline and dropped some deets on two of the biggest properties. First up, Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts, which was announced last year, and which original author JK Rowling will be penning. We knew all of that already, what we didn’t know was that “three megamovies are planned”. The trilogy, described as “neither prequels or sequels, will start in New York about seven decades before the arrival of Mr. Potter and his pals” and stars “magizoologist Newt Scamander.
The NY Times then turned their attention to WB’s DC comics properties, which many people (this writer included) feel the studio is squandering a bit, especially when you consider how their rival, Marvel, has been firing on all cylinders. That is changing (Man of Steel and the upcoming Batman vs Superman being the first steps), and it’s apparently all thanks to Tsujihara eliminating unnecessary management layers and get a more cohesive vision for what they want to do with these characters. As for just which characters we’ll be seeing, Tsujihara mentioned the new Flash TV show in CW, and the Jim Gordon-centric, young Batman tale, Gotham on Fox. But on the movie front, a brand new film series will apparently be announced in the near future, that is expected to included the long rumoured Justice League movie. If I had to guess, I would say “near future” equals Comic-Con in July.
Based on this rather telling Then and Now pic from X-Men and The Wolverine respectively, I think Hugh Jackman should just drop the “u” out of his name, and just call himself HGH. As in Human Growth Hormone, because holy hell, look at those muscles.
Did you know that Breaking Bad is actually just a prequel to The Walking Dead? Those sly bastards at AMC have been sneaking a shared universe right under our noses the whole time, and we never even noticed it before.
Empire has put together this rather awesome gallery of 26 Behind the Scenes Pics for Marvel Movies from Iron Man to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Poster of the Day: The Other Woman emoji alternate poster. Here’s the original to compare.
Remember all those pics that Dwayne Johnson tweeted about himself in character during the production on Hercules? Cool, right? Did you see those others pics released by a bunch of the other crew members? Oh, you didn’t? Guess it might have had something to do with the fact that nearly 50 crew members were fired for just taking any on-set pics. Turns out that the studio really wanted to keep a very tight lid on the characters’ look, and even Johnson had to ask permission to release the ones he did.
Here’s the first look at Scarlett Johansson in Luc Besson’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Lucy, in the film ScarJo plays a reluctant drug mule, who gets into a bit of trouble when she is double crossed by the people she’s working for. In a bid to get rid of the cocktail of drugs she’s carrying, she takes them all and finds herself suddenly developing ass kicking superpowers that includes firing gun sideways.
I’m 100% sure that this exact scenario plays out on the Cape Flats every Friday night.
Former US President George W. Bush held a private screening of AMC’s upcoming Revolutionary War series Turn over the weekend. The drama follows Jamie Bell’s Abe Woodhull, who was pivotal in establishing an intelligence network that aided George Washington during the War, and was screened for Gee Dubya due to his time spent in the CIA,, which gave him a good insight into the spy game. Bush had this to say about the show:
“AMC put together a brilliant show, a fantastic cast, there’s one problem however, and that’s waiting till the next episode.”
In related news, that’s probably the only time I’ve typed the words “George W. Bush” and “intelligence” in such close proximity.
Here’s a new featurette for Wally Pfister’s unofficial Tron sequel directorial debut Transcendence.
Sorry, John Boyega. Looks like your agent will have to go back to attacking the block, trying to get you into a big budget franchise. It was reported last week that Boyega was up for a role in Terminator: Genesis as Terminator creator Miles Dyson’s son. However the role has been been cast this weekend with The Hunger Games’ Dayo Okeniyi getting the nod over Boyega. Okeniyi, who played Thresh in The Hunger Games and is also seen in The Spectacular Now and Endless Love, will see his character as a (micro)chip off the old block, as “a Steve Jobs genius who figures heavily into the conclusion of the film”.
Deadline mention that there was a bit of a tug of war between the Terminator franchise and JJ Abrams’ Star Wars, who also wanted Okeniyi to test for a lead role in their pic. In the end, after some persuasion from Skydance’s David Ellis, Okeniyi went with the killer robots. What’s interesting though, is that Boyega has also been rumoured to be testing for a lead role in Star Wars: Episode VII. Could they have been up for the same role? If so, does this mean that Boyega has a clean shot at taking it?
Now that we’ve begrudgingly accepted the fact that they’re actually doing an English-language remake of The Raid, I guess we need to start looking at who to cast in it. One man whose CV definitely makes him a candidate is Ninja franchise star Scott Adkins. While speaking of Adkins about his latest bit of celluloid ass-kickery, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, Total Film asked him about whether or not he’d be up to star in a Raid remake, and it turns out he already has a potential stub of a toe in the door.
“I’m a huge fan, I’m a massive fan, and this is no secret: I’m friends with [The Raid 1 & 2 director Gareth Evans]. And, absolutely, of course I would love to, that’s all I’ll say at this point…
“I’ve spoken to Gareth about it, he’s an executive producer [on the remake], he’s going to let other people create their version of it, he’s not going to get too involved. I know Gareth would like to work with me in the future – hopefully that does happen.
“I’m a massive fan, I cannot wait to see Raid 2. Just yesterday we watched that deleted scene, how amazing is that for a deleted scene? The guy is a poet, the guy is a poet. he’s so much more than an action director.”
And now I give you the absolutely, insanely awesome mashup of one of the greatest songs of the 20th century and one of the greatest movie franchise of the 20th century. No it’s not Ernest Sings “Hit Me Baby One More Time”, but rather A Star Wars Bohemian Rhapsody! And it’s brilliant!
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: March 31, 2014
