Movie critic Roger Ebert is waging a one-man war against the latest Hollywood love affair – and no, this has nothing to do with Sandra Bullock.
It’s Tinseltown’s newfound obsession with 3D that has the esteemed author and culture commentator up in arms. “3D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension,” Ebert writes in a new essay for Newsweek. “Hollywood’s current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience.”
Ever since James Cameron’s blue man adventure Avatar blew away the competition and became the highest grossing movie of all time, studios have been clamouring to release 3D projects, which have so far included Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans a 3-D flick. There has been talk of 3D Ghostbusters and Gremlins, a 3D Mad Max, a 3D Life of Pi and even 3D porn. But as much as moviegoers appear to love the gimmick, Ebert has already had enough.
“It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets,” Ebert says. The essay goes on to list nine solid reasons why 3D is a bad idea, including that it’s a distraction, the picture is dimmer than in 2D and, most damningly, that 3D isn’t appropriate for serious films.
“I’m not opposed to 3-D as an option,” Ebert argues. “I’m opposed to it as a way of life for Hollywood, where it seems to be skewing major studio output away from the kinds of films we think of as Oscar-worthy… Hollywood is racing headlong toward the kiddie market.”
Ebert’s argument flies in the face of recent comments by the legendary Martin Scorsese who recently suggested that non-action fare would indeed make good 3D viewing. Scorses said, “Why couldn’t a film like Precious be in 3D? It should be.”
The smash hit musical television series Glee is absolutely everywhere these days, dominating both the TV ratings and the pop Top 40. So it was really only a matter of time before the Gleeks would start popping up on the big screen.
We already know that Finn (Cory Monteith) will be appearing in Monte Carlo while guidance counselor Emma (Jayma Mays) will star as Neil Patrick Harris’ wife in The Smurfs. Now comes word that Dianna Agron – aka mean girl cheerleader Quinn Fabray – has snagged the female lead in I Am Number Four.
The sci-fi film will be an adaptation of an as-yet-unpublished-but-not-for-long-now young adult novel by James Frey and Jobie Hughes about aliens hiding out on earth as teenagers in high school. The film will star British actor Alex Pettyfer as the title character Number Four. Agron will play an earth-born girl who falls for the spaceman.
The role will be Agron’s first in a big-studio feature production. With Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg producing and Disturbia and Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso on board to helm the shoot, Number Four has blockbuster written all over it.
Which is not a bad way to start a film career.
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Fans of the Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman had every reason to have high hopes that a sequel to the comedy classic was on the way. Director Adam McKay was talking about the project non-stop and all of the original stars seemed to be climbing on board one by one.
So brace yourself for the bad news: Anchorman 2 ain’t gonna happen.
So says McKay via Twitter. The director posted the news on Thursday, writing, “So bummed. Paramount basically passed on Anchorman 2. Even after we cut our budget down. We tried.”
The original Anchorman, which starred Ferrell along with Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate and Steve Carell was a satirical look at TV news set in the black hole of fashion known as the 1970s. Released in 2004, the film grossed $90 million at the box office and has developed something of a cult following ever since.
Speculation had been rife the past few months that McKay and crew were excited about getting back together, but even after the cast agreed to big salary cuts to encourage executives, the studio apparently still decided not to pick up the project.
Stay classy Paramount.
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Iron Man 2 hasn’t even hit theatres yet, but star Robert Downey Jr. is already teasing fans with vague promises of a third installment in the super-powered franchise.
Speaking to MTV news before the premiere of the new sequel, Downey Jr. had a pretty confident answer when he was asked if a third film is likely. “I think it’s going to go down,” said the man who should know better than most.
Downey Jr. plays playboy billionaire Tony Stark – and of course his steel-domed alter-ego Iron Man, one of Marvel Comics’ most popular and enduring heroes. The first film in the series, released in 2008, was the second highest grossing movie of the year.
But Downey Jr. may well suit up again before Iron Man 3 even goes into production. The star has played coy about his involvement in the upcoming Avengers, but is widely expected to star in that film as well given Iron Man’s history with the super-group. Downey Jr. even confirmed to MTV that Avengers is “supposedly first on [Marvel's] docket.”
The actor believes there are many more stories to be told about Tony Stark and his metal suit stemming from his decades of comic book adventures. In fact, he compares the hero to his other recent character, Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes.
“It’s all there,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a bunch of different storylines from different decades. I always feel, just like with ‘Sherlock,’ you’re not going to do any better than you will looking back at [Arthur Conan] Doyle’s stories.”
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Few novelists have as great a relationship with Hollywood as horror master Stephen King. He has written, produced and directed adaptations of his own work and it seems that more of his novels have been turned into films than haven’t. But of all his work, perhaps none is as cinematic as his “magnum opus” The Dark Tower.
Yet for years Hollywood has tried and failed to bring the series of sci-fi westerns to the big screen. Now that’s set to change as Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are teaming up with Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to adapt the fantasy books.
The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek director, J.J. Abrams, had held onto the rights for years, with plans to develop the novels into a television series with the producers of Lost. When those plans were scuttled, the rights were returned to King. Now Howard and his entourage intend to develop a feature film that can act as a sort of lead off for their own TV series.
Built around the character of “The Gunslinger,” The Dark Tower series so far measures seven novels and is King’s attempt to tie all of his work together into one universe. A popular series of graphic novels has also been spun off from the books.
There’s no deal on the table just yet, but with Howard, Grazer and Goldsman on board such things are a mere technicality.
One of the biggest, loudest, BOOMiest moves of the 1980s is getting the reboot treatment as writer/director David Ayer has signed on to remake Commando, the seminal Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick.
Ayer, who wrote the Denzel Washington hit Training Day, has agreed to both write and direct the picture, the original of which helped make the future Governator a star. Released in 1985, Commando was Schwarzenegger’s first post-Conan hit and established the muscle-bound Austrian as a new breed of action star.
A report on Deadline Hollywood suggests that Ayer, himself a former Navy soldier, plans to make some pretty significant changes to the story. In the original, Arnie played a former soldier reluctantly brought back into the fight after an evil dictator kidnaps his daughter. Ayer is said to be keen to make the new film more realistic and feature a Commando who’s less muscle and more strategy.
It’s a nervy strategy for a film best remembered for its hammy dialogue and ridiculous explosions, but audiences today have different expectations for their action films. Commando joins Predator in the list of 80s Schwarzenegger flicks currently getting redone and sequel-ized.
No casting decisions have been made or announced, but one has to imagine that every young actor in Hollywood looking to establish himself as a tough guy will be eyeing the role.
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In their unending quest to uncover new stories to share with the world, Hollywood’s brave production executives are fearless in their determination to wring sentiment and drama out of every single bit of nostalgia that exists for our childhoods. To this end, Paramount has announced plans to make a film about the Magic 8-Ball.
Yes, the Magic 8-Ball – that birthday present you received when you were ten that was fun for about fifteen minutes before it rolled under your bed never to be seen again.
Deadline reports that the announcement is part of the deal Paramount has with toy giant Mattel which has already led to such cinematic spectaculars as the Transformers films, G.I. Joe and the upcoming Battleship. A script is already being written by Jon Gunn and John Mann, which would sound like fake pen names were they not already known as the duo behind the upcoming Dream Works Animation feature Alcatraz Vs. The Evil Librarians.
According to Wikipedia, the Magic 8-Ball was invented way back in 1946 and has remained pretty much unchanged ever since. An oversized novelty billiard ball with a die in the middle, the Magic 8-Ball has never been scientifically proven to accurately foretell the future. But that doesn’t mean it’s not wise.
For production executives reading this story, the following is a list of some of the few remaining branded properties not yet turned into films: Slinky; The Chia Pet; Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum; The Quarter Pounder w/Cheese and That Little Plastic Thing You Use to Open Milk Bags With.
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Fans of the hit television series The Office know that there have been plenty of upheavals at the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company over the past few years. Now star Steve Carell says the biggest shake up may be just around the corner.
Carell, who plays notoriously inefficient office manager Michael Scott on the NBC sitcom, has quietly let slip that he intends to leave the show after his contract wraps at the end of the next TV season. And by “quietly” we mean he told the press.
Talking to the BBC to promote the British release of his and Tina Fey’s rom-com Date Night, Carell was asked if he intends to stay with the show past its seventh season. “I don’t think so,” Officetally.com quotes him as saying. “I think that will probably be my last year.”
Speculation is already rampant that Carell’s flourishing film career is the reason behind his planned departure. After a star-making turn in Anchorman, Carell followed up with a successful string of lead roles in feature films, including The 40 Year Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, Dan in Real Life and, of course, the recent hit Date Night. With such big screen success, Carell could be looking to escape the grind of TV production for the greener fields of movie stardom.
Fans of the funnyman can look forward to his next appearance on the big screen in Dinner for Schmucks, co-starring Paul Rudd, opening nationwide this July.
Ever since Yann Martel’s extraordinary novel Life of Pi captured the attention of Hollywood seven years ago, directors have tried and failed to find a way to adapt the story for the silver screen. Now Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee says he’s the man for the job.
Fox 2000 acquired the rights to produce a film based on the book in 2003, and since then such talented and award-winning directors as Alfonso Cuaron, M. Night Shyamalan and Jean-Pierre Jeunet have tackled and been defeated by the project. Indiewire today reveals that Lee and his producing partner Gil Netter are now pitching Fox on a version of the story that Netter says is “a 3D magical fantasy adventure, crammed with visual effects.”
The story of a young Indian boy cast adrift in a small boat with a tiger, a zebra and a hyena, Martell’s book won countless awards upon its publication, most notably the Booker Prize.
The film, however, presents numerous challenges to anyone hoping to film it. Not least of these is that it’s not exactly safe to put a young boy in the same boat as a tiger. Or a hyena. Lee addressed these issues last year when he first began circling the project, telling Empire “In the old days I think maybe you wouldn’t have needed it, but nowadays the animal rights people wouldn’t let you do it, so we’ve got to go more expensively.”
Thus the need for a whole lot of CGI, which Lee is apparently keen to do in the new 3D format that Hollywood has fallen in love with. Whether or not 3D is enough to convince audiences to spend two hours in a small boat with a child and a tiger remains to be seen.
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Sometimes rumours are just rumours. And sometimes they’re the truth. Around Hollywood, it can be impossible to know the difference.
But in the case of rumours that have been floating around for some time now regarding just who will be behind the camera for the final chapter of the beloved Twilight saga, it seems the gossip mongers were right: Oscar-winner Bill Condon will in fact be the director to make Twilight: Breaking Dawn.
It’s still a little unclear as to whether or not Summit Entertainment – producers behind the franchise – intends to follow through with potential plans to break the final book of the series up into two separate films a la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but that idea is still on the table.
What has been confirmed is that Condon (who won his Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the wonderful Gods and Monsters back in 1998 but is best known for directing Dreamgirls) will be at the helm. In a press release announcing the hiring, Summit explained their decision: “Bringing Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn to the screen requires a graceful and intelligent hand and we believe Bill Condon is exactly the right steward, having shown equal and abundant talents of immense creativity and subtle sensitivity.”
Condon is “very excited” to be attached to the project. “As fans of the series know, this is a one-of-a-kind book” he’s quoted as saying in the same release. “And we’re hoping to create an equally unique cinematic experience.”
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