Home Entertainment Extras! 19 December 2014

Extras! 19 December 2014

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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!

  • Yesterday we heard that as part of the fallout of the cyber-terror campaign against Sony, New Regency was also shutting down production on their upcoming North Korea based thriller Pyongyang. The movie was to star Steve Carell and helmed by Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Gore Verbinski, and the director has now given his own thoughts on the matter.

Getting the facts straight:

Yesterday, I was told by New Regency and Fox that Fox will no longer be distributing the film. Prior to that, the film was green lit and fully funded by New Regency with Fox distributing. I have been told in no uncertain words that based on the situation at Sony, Fox has now decided to not distribute the film. Without a distributor, New Regency was forced to shut the film down.

My thoughts:

I find it ironic that fear is eliminating the possibility to tell stories that depict our ability to overcome fear.

Gore Verbinski

 

  • Back in May, Star Wars: The Force Awakens introduced the UNICEF charity initiative “Force for Change” with a video that gave us our first look at the set of the new movie. Now the director is back to say “Thank you”for all the charity efforts, but this time he’s joined by the entire cast and crew, including our first look at a couple of old favourites returning to the screen in the much-anticipated next entry in the franchise.

  • And staying with Star Wars: The Force Awakens… There’s been a rumour going around that Andy Serkis is actually playing two separate roles in the new film, but the actor and mo-cap legend has now dismissed this as bantha poodoo. As per usual with this film, he didn’t really give much detail, but he did confirm that it’s his voice (with “no digital manipulation”) that we’re hearing in the trailer.

“[The rumours are] not true at all. I can say I only play one character… I can’t say a single thing about [whether my character is motion-captured or physically on-screen] I’m sorry! (grins) These things will all come out in the fullness of time, I promise.”

“I have to be very careful about how I answer these questions. The character …[long pause]…He’s been through some stuff.”

DHM-Wonderful-Life-Reg

“Yeah, I committed to doing a couple more. I can’t speak for Mr. Bay, but something tells me we’ll be on set soon.”

Hopefully they gave themselves enough time to figure out they took a movie that features a giant robo-truck with a flaming sword riding fire-breathing robot dragon and turned it into one of the most mind-numbingly tedious experiences of the year.

  • The mystery of who Peter Quill aka Star Lord’s father is will be central to Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which of course means that fans have been drawn up a long list of candidates by now. Thanks writer-director James Gunn’s Instagram though, we can now scratch one name off that list – a name that has been in a lot of movie news headlines as of late.

A photo posted by James Gunn (@jamesgunn) on

  • In retrospect, 2014 was a very good year for movies (particular blockbusters, almost all of which delivered on or exceeded their promises). Unfortunately, it was also a very bad year for movie posters. How did a movie as incredible as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes get a poster that lazy?!
  • Planning to go watch The Hobbit this weekend, but you can’t keep your Balrog’s and Bombadill’s straight and you don’t have time to wade through it all over again? Well, then allow this handy video to lay out the whole Lord of the Rings mythology for you in just 4-minutes.

  • Pedro Pascal was easily the breakthrough star of Game of Thrones this year with his charming turn as the roguish Oberyn Martell. That was until [SPOILER ALERT] “The Mountain” broke through his skull of course (Urgh… Just the memory is enough to make me flinch). Lots of fans were hoping that Pascal would use his star marking turn to launch himself into the big time, and it looks like he may be doing just that, as he has reportedly signed on to star with Matt Damon in director Zhang Yimou’s still untitled Great Wall of China historical epic. The latest flick from the legendary Chinese filmmaker, which is set to be the largest film ever filmed completely in China, “follows an elite force making a last stand for humanity on the world’s most iconic structure.”
  • And thus we come to the end of the last news post on TheMovies.co.za for 2014. We will be taking a couple of weeks off during the festive season, and except for a few scheduled reviews and the possibility of any major breaking news, we are officially on holiday. So to end it all off, how about we take a look back at 330 of this year’s movies, all mashed together in just 8-minutes!

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 19, 2014

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