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!
- So Pitch Perfect 2 made a lot of money on its opening weekend. How much money? Enough to officially make it the third highest domestic opening of all time for a female director, with Elizabeth Banks’ sequel (which is actually her directing debut) only being beaten by Catherine Hardwick’s Twilight and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey.
- So now that Pitch Perfect 2 star Anna Kendrick is making all that money, she can do anything she wants. Anything. Even reboot Indiana Jones if she wanted to!
- Remember those stories about how Sony, while making an all-female Ghostbusters reboot were also developing another male-centric movie with Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum leading? Yeah, Chris Pratt would like you to know that those reports are like excreted bovine body waste.
“No one has ever even spoken to me about that. Never. I’ve even seen Channing a couple times. As far as I know, that’s complete bullshit. Knight Rider—bullshit. All of them.”
- Poster of the day: The Exorcist
- Looks like Lawrence Kasdan and JJ Abrams are on a bit a diet when it comes to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The veteran screenwriter has revealed that for the highly anticipated seventh Star Wars film, him and co-writer/director Abrams have been trying their best to slim down the massive blockbuster.
“This new movie, first of all, it’s turning out really great. J.J. directed it so beautifully, and it’s so exhilarating and everything. It’s a big movie. It’s full of wonderful stuff, incident and character stuff and jokes and effects. One of the things that we always refocus on from the get-go was that it not be one of these very long, bloated blockbusters. A lot of very entertaining movies lately are too long. In the last 20 minutes, you think, why isn’t this over? We didn’t want to make a movie like that. I mean, we were really aiming to have it be—when it’s over you’ll say, “I wish there’s more.” Or, “Wait, is it over?” Because how rarely you get that feeling nowadays, and I think we’re headed there. But it means that there will be constant critical looking at it from now to the end, saying, “Do we need this? Do we need that? Is it better if this comes out, even though we love it?” Killing your darlings.”
- You may notice that in that previous quote, Lawrence Kasdan gave away no plot details for The Force Awakens, and that’s because this movie’s production is currently being kept as watertight as a duck’s butthole. Which is a huge change from back in 1979 when David Prowse, the guy who played Darth Vader, gave away one of the biggest plot twists in movie history before the movie was even in production (check the second last paragraph).
- Before you think you’re drunk again (which is normal for 16:00 on a Tuesday), yes, I am indeed posting a Taylor Swift music video. So what the heck is a Taylor Swift music video doing on here (besides for making Nick happy)? Well, this particular video was directed by Joseph Kahn, who recently made that gritty Power/Rangers fan film, and features a gigantic cast of actresses and models including Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Jessica Alba, Cindy Crawford and more.
- Hey, since we’ve had one music video, we may as well have another. And this one is hilarious! Funnyman Keegan-Micheal Key of Key & Peele fame did this video for singer/guitarist Bhi Bhiman’s new song “Moving To Brussells” in which he parodies JK Simmons’ iconic music teacher from the Oscar winning Whiplash perfectly!
- In case you were wondering, that blind, red onesie wearing, bungee-cord attached, flame-throwing guitarist in Mad Max: Fury Road is officially known as the Doof Warrior and everything about him is real. No, I don’t mean the actor who plays him is blind, but I mean writer/director George Miller really had them make a fully functional flame thrower guitar which he is really playing on a truck made out of a tower of speakers and amps riding through the desert.
- And staying with Mad Max: Fury Road, Miller has revealed that before Tom Hardy got the gig to replace Mel Gibson as the iconic character, Miller had actually had several meetings with Heath Ledger before the actor tragically passed away in 2008.
“Every time Heath [Ledger] would come through Sidney, he’d call in and we’d chat about Max. He had that same thing that Mel and Tom Hardy have—that maleness, charisma, and restless energy, which you need to play a relatively still character. The world lost someone great when he went. Tom was the next to walk through the door that had that vibe.”
Based on the brilliant insanity we saw from Ledger in his final role as the Joker in The Dark Knight, I can only imagine what his take on Max would have been like.
- Look, I don’t mean to make light of what could have been a fatally tragic situation, but Australia was threatening to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs because he brought them into the country on his private plane. That’s a pretty ridiculous thought. So of course the internet went and made it even more ridiculous, thanks Australian agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce’s press conference and some handy editing.
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: May 19, 2015
The Sten
May 19, 2015 at 16:14
They could cast Anna Kendrick as Conan the Barbarian and I’ll still watch it.