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!
- Welcome to a MARVEL-ous version of Extras today. With everybody rightfully going gaga over Guardians of the Galaxy at the moment, it seems the movie blogosphere is just filled with stories around the comic book film studio. And to kick things off, here’s a great little contribution from Marvel themselves who have unveiled this rather well put together video not only looking back at the entirety of their Phase 1 and Phase 2 offerings, but also teasing what’s to come in Avengers: Age of Ultron and beyond, thanks to SPOILER-ish cameo from a certain crayola coloured Guardians character.
- Luc Besson’s planned reboot of the Transporter series has got itself a date (and it didn’t even resort to lying about itself on internet dating sites). The horribly named Transporter Legacy, the first movie in the new trilogy which will see Ed Skeins (Game of Thrones) trying to step into Jason Stathams’ shoes, tux and probably high powered German automobile, will be hitting cinemas screens on March 6, 2015. Besson will be producing through his EuropaCorp while Camille Delamarre – the director behind Brick Mansions, the US remake of Besson’s District B13 – will be helming.
- Speaking of movies with bad names getting dates, Warner Bros has renamed their Andy Serkis directed live action Jungle Book adaptaion to Jungle Book: Origins (what, was Mowgli v Sher Khan: Dawn of Jungle taken?) and have scheduled it for release on October 21, 2016.
- And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Jungle Book: Origins *groan* is not the same movie as Disney’s Jon Favreau directed effort. Yes, Hollywood is doing that two similar movies releasing close to each other thing again. Except Disney’s more sensibly named Jungle Book will actually be hitting screens more than a year earlier on October 9, 2015, and will have the added benefit of a star studded voice cast that just got another serious star sud. Joining the already cast Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Walken, Lupito Nyong’o and Giancarlo Esposito in the live-action/animation hybrid, Bill Murray has been cast as the voice of Baloo, the creator of the bear necessities way of life.
- Poster of the Day: Her
- Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an almost unmatched cinematic marvel. An incredibly ambitious project filmed over 12 years, it allows us to watch as a little boy grows up into a young man in fron of our eyes. But as that earlier “almost” hints, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a kid grow up on screen in a magical story.
- I would like to preface this news piece with the fact that chart topping New Zealand songstress Lorde is only 17-years old. Keep that in mind when you read that she’s just been picked to curate the full soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. When I was 17, I could barely tell my butt from my elbow (which made for very interesting games of rugby), while Lorde is getting stuff done.
“It’s so rewarding, but it blows my mind that this massive studio has just handed the reigns over to a 17-year-old. I’ve literally been doing it by myself, contacting every artist, sorting everything out. I don’t know if I want to tell you anything yet! It’s very new. But there are some people on there that you’re going to be super surprised by. You’ll be like, what? I haven’t heard from them in ages… but in a great way.”
- So there you are, sitting in the cinema, all giddy with excitement as you’re getting ready to watch that Marvel movie everybody’s talking about. The lights dim, the credits start and a movie that is definitely about Guardians comes on screen, just not the Guardians of the Galaxy movie you bought a ticket to.
- Well, look what the angry Aussie from a post-apocalyptic future dragged in. A couple of new pics from Mad Max: Fury Road has just showed up online.
- Hayley Atwell will soon be kicking names and taking asses (or something like that) when she reprises her Captain America character for Marvel’s new ABC TV series Agent Carter. With the revalations made about the character and how she ties into the origin of modern-day peacekeeping force S.H.I.E.L.D., it may be surprising to hear that while there are some plans for further down the timeline, the first season will not be featuring either Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead the cast and crew revealed to IGN that this will be the adventures of the SSR, the organization that will one day eventually become S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s also been revealed that Howard Stark will be the one sending Atwell’s Peggy Carter on secret spy missions, while Edwin Jarvis – who would eventually go on to become the inspiration for Tony Stark’s House A.I./Manservant JARVIS – will be heading into battle with her while also providing her with all kinds of fancy gizmos.
What’s even more interesting though, is that the show is being described as being in the vein of the recent Fargo and True Detective, where it plays out more like an 8-hour long movie instead of an episodic series. And to help sell that movie feel, Marvel have brought in some heavy hitters as it’s already been confirmed that Joe Johnson (Captain America: The First Avenger, The Rocketeer) and the Russo Bros (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) will all be directing episodes in the show’s first season.
- What happens at Comic-Con, stays at Comic-Con…. unless you want to put it in a funny video on Youtube.
- I think we need to start a new internet meme: Good Guy James Gunn. With the rest of the geek world having a party at the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, you would expect Gunn to be on a beach somewhere getting wasted on brightly coloured drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. Instead, he spent the weekend on Twitter interacting with fans, writing heartfelt thank-you’s Facebook and oh yeah, writing the script to Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
“Thanks to all of you who saw (and are seeing) Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend, from the bottom of my heart. The Guardians are a group of oddballs, outcasts, and geeks. The movie is for anyone who ever felt cast aside, left out, or different. It’s for all of us who don’t belong. This movie belongs to you. And, today, I think we’re doing okay.
I am of course happy with all the film has accomplished box-office-wise. But what touches me the most is that the film I told the folks at Marvel I wanted to make two years ago is the film that you’re seeing in theaters today – it’s that so many of you seem to be directly EXPERIENCING the film I INTENDED. The cast, the producers, the crew, and I felt like we were making something special while we were making it. But it is very rare that a director’s INTENTIONS in creating a film, or a scene, or a character, or a line of dialogue are, seemingly, specifically what is experienced by an audience (not to mention critics!), and that seems to be what has happened here. You have allowed a talking raccoon – for a moment, a minute, or a day – to make you a little more human. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.
If I relied on myself to implement these intentions, the film would be a shambling mess. But instead, I had a wonderful cast, genius producers, an incredibly brave studio, sublimely talented visual effects artists, great editors, and the best damn crew of mostly-British bastards to actually implement these intentions for me. Where I had a good idea they would, through alchemy, transform it into a great one. Many of you involved are friends of mine on Facebook. Many of you will read this somewhere else. I love you all.
You may remember me posting here a couple weeks ago how sad I was to be finishing up the film, that I was having trouble letting go of Rocket, and that I was going to miss him. But seeing him (and Groot, and the rest of the team) embraced by the world like they have been, to be UNDERSTOOD, makes it a wonderful letting go. It’s like giving a foster pet up for adoption to the most wonderful parents in the world.
And, of course, I’m not really saying goodbye as, while many of you have been enjoying the film, I’ve spent this weekend hard at work on the sequel. I couldn’t help myself! The results are nice but it’s really the creative process I love and that keeps me going. I’m on fire with this thing! The Guardians have so many hardships and heartaches and triumphs ahead of them, and I can’t wait to share them with all of you.
Onto week two…
Love, James”
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: August 4, 2014
