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Something is stirring in Hobbit land

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:16:57 +0000

According to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit fansite TheOneRing.net we may be getting some information regarding the upcoming films on December 8th…

I received a mysterious email followed up by a phone call in the last few days. I don’t know much, all I know is that ‘Something is coming’ on December 8th, 2009. And that we should be watching this space and www.lordoftherings.net stay tuned for more!

Casting news? Will they announce the actor who will play Bilbo Baggins? Filming is expected to begin in just over three months so it’s bound to be something.

Although…it could have something to do with the Blu-ray edition of the trilogy we heard about earlier this year.

So, how much did New Moon make?

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:16:06 +0000

Even though the early consensus from critics isn’t good, New Moon was always expected to dominate the box office this weekend, and so far it has. Spectacularly:

From Nikki Finke:

Summit Entertainment just announced its New Moon debuted with $26.27M in 12:01AM screenings from 3,514 theaters. That sets a new midnight opening record, smashing The Dark Knight’s $18.4M on July 18, 2008, and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince’s $22.2M on July 15, 2009. (Summit’s re-release of Twilight Thursday night in 2,057 dates made $1.3M.) Meanwhile, Fandango tells me that New Moon is trending to sell more than 10 tickets per second on the site throughout the course of today.

Wowza. Those are some dedicated fans.

New Moon is also breaking records overseas:

Summit reported Thursday afternoon that at midnight showings on 466 screens in Australia, the movie took in AUS$1.7 million ($1.6 million). It sailed past the previous Australian midnight record set by “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” which took in AUS$1.26 million ($1.2 million) in 2005.
In France, where “Moon” completed its first day, it was No. 1 with 488,000 admissions, translating to $4.26 million, from 751 theaters. By comparison, “Twilight” scored 140,960 admissions, $1.158 million, on its first day in that country.
In Italy, partial returns put the movie’s gross at €$1.83 million ($2.7 million) from 625 screens. The movie is shaping up as the third-highest Wednesday opener in Italy, behind only “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
Meanwhile in Spain, “Moon” drew €1.475 million ($2.2 million) on 652 screens. In Spain, it also ranked as the third-best Wednesday opening ever — behind “Order of the Phoenix” and “Half-Blood Prince.”

I think it’s safe to assume New Moon will out-gross Twilight.

Have you seen New Moon? If so, what are your thoughts?

New Avatar featurette shows us the war machines

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:56:44 +0000

By this time next month there is a good chance you will have seen James Cameron’s Avatar. You may have even seen it twice. In which case you will have seen every single scene, however until then you may want to avoid featurettes like this. While they are extremely cool and make you want to see the movie immediately, they do reveal a little bit too much.

This one focuses on the weapons, robots, hardware and aircraft the humans use in the film. We also see James Cameron and producer Jon Landau talking about the science and logistics behind it all, for instance, the reason the aircraft land and take-off vertically is due to the lack of actual landing strips on Pandora. It’s good to see some common sense in a big effects-orientated movie.

Michael Bay says Megan Fox has a “great part in Transformers 3″

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:34:02 +0000

Megan Fox is known for saying crazy things, to the media anyway, and in recent interviews she apparently referred to Michael Bay as a “nightmare,” and “Hitler”, which isn’t a very clever thing to say to your ‘boss’. However it seems Transformers 2 director Michael Bay couldn’t care less:

“I love her,” the man responsible for the blockbuster franchise told USA TODAY. “It’s just, she’s young. Everyone’s got to give her a break, she only…23? It’s just hard. I’ve traveled around the world with her and she’s just like this world symbol now, you know?”
So he brushes her diatribes under the carpet? “Absolutely,” he said. “She called me (after the Hitler comment) and goes, ‘It’s all bullsh—t, Mike.’ The press, they just like to prey, and stalk, and pounce and find a good little juicy thing. But she’s always wanted to do these crazy comments. That’s just her. She’s great.”
He also said, “She’s got a great part in Transformers 3,” and he said he’s currently working on the script. So Bay’s not planning on getting revenge by, say, killing her off? “No, no. no,” he said, dismissing it. “She gets enough of that already.”

The role of Mikaela Banes in the franchise consists of looking hot and being Sam Witwicky’s girlfriend. She did the truck thing with Bumblebee in the first film, but in Revenge of the Fallen she didn’t really have a purpose. This time around Bay and the writers don’t have a writers strike to battle with, so hopefully they take their time and develop the story and characters. Especially the robot ones.

Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones needed “more violence and suffering”

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:09:23 +0000

You would have thought The Lovely Bones, which tells the story of a raped and murdered 14-year-old girl named Susie who watches over her family as they mourn and try to find her killer, would have the ‘violence’ and ’suffering’ boxes well and truly ticked. However, according to Reuters early test screening showed that people were not satisfied, and wanted more.

Possible spoilers:

Jackson told Reuters he was taken aback to find that in early screenings audiences “were simply not satisfied” with a scene of one character’s death. “They wanted far more violence,” Jackson said, so the “Lord of the Rings” director went back to the editing room to “basically add more violence and suffering.”
Yet, with a higher level of violence, it may have earned an “R” rating, meaning it would be seen mostly by adults. So, when shooting one death scene of a man falling to his death, Jackson chose to simply have him disappear off the edge of a cliff and not show the gruesome details of his fall. “We got a lot of people telling us that they were disappointed with this death scene, as they wanted him to see (the character) in agony and suffer a lot more,” he said. “They just weren’t satisfied.”
Jackson said he and his filmmakers were perplexed because they had already shot much of the movie. They had to go back to the editing room and use digital effects to add shots where (the character) bounces against the cliff on the way down. “We had to create a whole suffering death scene just to give people the satisfaction they needed,” he said.

So if you see The Lovely Bones next January (or February if you’re in the UK) and you witness a character bouncing off a cliff, you’ll know it’s because some people (with possible mental conditions) wanted it.

Another trailer for the Lightning Thief

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:40:39 +0000

Yesterday we saw an international trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and now we have a new domestic one. It’s similar to the one we got yesterday but it’s longer, contains new footage, and we find out that Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon and can control water. People who have read the book will have known that already, however having only just found out I think it’s pretty cool.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is directed by Chris Columbus and stars Logan Lerman, Sean Bean, Kevin McKidd, Uma Thurman and Rosario Dawson, and will be released next February.

Here’s a new featurette for The Wolfman

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:19:14 +0000

Universal has released a new featurette which gives us a better understanding of the story behind The Wolfman. It begins by showing clips of The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein and other classic monster movies from the black and white era, and then Benico del Toro talks us though the story for this modern take on the “iconic” Wolfman, which will introduce the beast to “a new generation”.

We also see Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt discussing the film, along with some new footage.

Universal to release Kick-Ass overseas

Liam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:32:13 +0000

In August Lionsgate bought the rights to release Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass in the US, however not for anywhere else. Now according to THR Universal has nabbed the rights to release the film in the U.K., Germany, Australia, Latin America, Austria, Switzerland and New Zealand. As I live in the UK this is good news for me, although the French and other Europeans will have to hope another deal is stuck to release it there.

In related Kick-Ass news director Matthew Vaughn made a commentary on the teaser trailer that was released earlier this month. He didn’t know he was, however. French Premiere magazine had a phone interview with him and they placed his voice over the trailer.

You’ll never guess which movie Anne Hathaway might be joining!

Liam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:51:21 +0000

First Rachel McAdams, then Julia Stiles, and now Anna Hathaway. Over the past few weeks we’ve been hearing that they’ve all apparently been talking/emailing/calling/communicating in some form with producers/casting people/Sam Raimi regarding a role in Spider-Man 4. This one comes from Nikki Finke who say that “producers have approached Anne Hathaway to star in the film”, however she doesn’t know for what role.

Since the first bit of casting news it was assumed the role was for Black Cat, and with the actresses we’ve been hearing about it seems that may be the case. They wouldn’t be talking to people like Hathaway and Stiles if the role wasn’t important, and Black Cat seems to be the only important female left to bring in after Gwen Stacy.

Will we hear about any more actresses in the near future? Who’s your choice to play Black Cat?

International Percy Jackson & The Olympians trailer

Liam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:58:31 +0000

We have a new international trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians The Lightning Thief, and it’s probably the best trailer released so far. Not only do we see more of Pierce Brosnan and Rosario Dawson, we get our first look at Uma Thurman as Medusa.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians will be released next February, and Clash of The Titans will be released in March. That means we will be getting two potentially cool movies based on Greek gods within 30 days of each other. Although, Percy Jackson has taken the mythology and given it a modern twist so there should be no conflict. I’m interested to see who plays the best Zeus though. Will it be Sean Bean or Liam Neeson?