Filmonic » 20th Century Fox

Spore movie in the works

Liam — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:45:11 +0000

20th Century Fox and Electronic Arts will collaborate to make an animated movie based on the game Spore.

I first heard about the game in 2006 and followed it up until it’s release in September 2008. It provided me with a few hours of fun, but overall I was disappointed. I was expecting a cool evolution game that would allow me to create a creature and take it from a micro-organism floating in the sea to a galaxy dominating beast. I got that, although it was all too cute and cuddly for my liking. To take over nearby tribes you could either sing to them, or thwack them with a stick, and they all had googly eyes. Although, I guess it was the cute and cuddly approach that helped create this movie deal.

From Variety:

Twentieth Century Fox has paired up with Electronic Arts to turn the publisher’s popular “Spore” game into an animated creature feature, with “Ice Age’s” Chris Wedge attached to helm.
Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, who penned Disney’s upcoming “The Princess and the Frog” and Ben Stiller pic “The Return of King Doug” at Paramount, will write the script for the “Spore” movie. It will be produced as a CG-animated toon by EA and Blue Sky Studios, which is behind the studio’s “Ice Age” pics, “Robots” and its next effort, “Rio.”

They’ve got a cool team behind it and the whole Spore concept is quite interesting so I can see myself seeing this, even if it is one for the kids. The evolution part will probably cause a bit of controversy when it’s released though.

Art V. Commerce: David Fincher’s Alien 3 Nightmare

Dave — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:05:52 +0000

We’re at a very precarious time in the history of mainstream cinema, the financial atmosphere of the world has forced the hand of the big studios into a strangling fist. I challenge anyone with the time to look over the releases schedule of the past two years and the upcoming releases into 2011 and not long for the early 90s when smaller studios were springing up to handle indie fare and genre films.

But we’re living in a belt-tightening world now, where the careers of studio executives depend on big movies with big budgets with big built-in audiences. That means a lot of adaptations from popular material, remakes and sequels. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that, in the constant battle of art vs. commerce, commerce has been kicking the living hell out of art for the latter half of the decade.

Which makes me sad for the visionary directors of the current period who are churning out independent films with vision. Releases from this year that come to mind: Duncan Jones’ Moon, Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom and Marc Webb’s 500 Days of Summer. Johnson was coming off Brick, a well-received but wholly independent film. He managed to keep his butt in the driver’s seat for his sophomore effort. Jones made the most of his tiny budget to play on interior sci-fi claustrophobia and miniatures to show us the expansive landscapes of our natural satellite. Marc Webb came from the world of music videos to develop 500 Days of Summer into a visual style that would set it apart from the generic RomCom it could have easily become.

And it was the success of 500 Days of Summer as a debut film coming from a director of music videos that got me looking into one of my favorite art vs. commerce horror stories: the making of Alien 3.

Director David Fincher was best known for his commercial work at the time. He had started out shooting matte photography at ILM and even did some shots for Return Of The Jedi early on in his career. By the time he was brought into the Alien franchise, the third film was already in the midst of an identity crisis.

With the success of Aliens alerting 20th Century Fox to the franchise that had sprung up under their noses, the idea of “cracking” what made an Alien film unique was abound. Preliminary writers on the project wanted to distance themselves from the confined corridors and color-less palettes of the previous two films. Ridley Scott had made a gothic horror film and James Cameron had refocused the concept into a combat movie. Early drafts were Ripley-less as Sigourney Weaver was uninterested in rejoining the series. Two early drafts saw the aliens spread like an airborne virus with Hicks or other Marines forced to control it. A later draft seeded the idea of a prison planet or a prison ship, but when Vincent Ward (What Dreams May Come) was brought on as a director, he scrapped it all

Ward’s vision for Alien 3 saw Ripley returning to a wooden planet inhabited by Monks who lived mostly free of modern technology. The monks saw the introduction of Ripley as a test by their god and the arrival of the alien as intervention from the devil. As producers tightened the budgetary leash on Ward, he became frustrated and dropped out of the project, leaving producers Walter Hill and David Giler with the task of writing a script that would fit into Fox’s idea of how much an Alien movie should cost*.

Enter Fincher, who is hired as the director while Hill and Giler are mashing Ward’s story with the earlier prison planet draft. The film has already spent $7 million dollars in development and no script. The script wouldn’t be finished by the time Fincher started shooting.

[* Aside – I’m actually leaving out an interesting draft of Alien 3 by Larry Ferguson that Fincher later described like this: “In the draft Larry was writing, she was going to be this women who had fallen from the stars. In the end she dies, and there are seven monks left – seven dwarfs. Seriously. I swear to God. She was like….what’s her name in Peter Pan? She was like Wendy. And she would make up all these stories. And in the end, there were these seven dwarfs left, and there was this f*cking tube they put her in, and they were waiting for Prince Charming to come wake her up. So that was one of the endings we had for this movie. You can imagine what Joe Roth said when he heard this. “What?! What are they doing over there?! What the f*ck is going on?!”]

In a 1991 article written in the midst of re-shoots by John H. Richardson, Fincher seems keenly aware of just how screwed he was as a commercial director coming in to a film that already was suffering in the tug-of-war between creative and monetary interests:

Fincher: So what do you want to know about my movie?
Q: How you got involved, the production process, what happened in London. All that staff.
Fincher: Well, it’s weird, because when I got involved, it was, we have a movie to make. How do we solve these problems? How do we get this movie made? I’d love to just take the 50 million bucks and just f***in’ start over again.
Q: That’s worth talking about. Maybe we can save some young director…….
Fincher: What would you say? There’s no way a first-time director can make a $50 million movie in this town with the f***in’ recession on the eve of the millennium, you know, with the panic that exists in this business right now. There’s no way. You can’t do it, because in the end, if you can’t say, “I made Jaws, trust me,” why should they trust you? One time, (producer) David Giler, incredibly aggressive and p***ed off on a conference call with Fox, said, “Why are you listening to him for, he’s a shoe salesman!”.
Q: Meaning your Nike commercial.
Fincher: Exactly. And it’s perfectly valid. What do I know? I’m a shoe salesman.

When Fincher brought on Blade Runner’s DP, industry legend, Jordan Cronenweth, the studio said production was moving too slowly and forced Fincher to fire him. They told Fincher to film the dialogue scenes first and save the yet-to-be-written action scenes for later, then they cut the length of his shoot from 93 days to 70, they told him he could only have 25 visual effects shots, they told him he could only build half-sets and not the sets that he had brought to the project.

The film was shooting at Pinewood Studios in England and when the exchange rate shifted against the dollar, Fox sent over producer Jon Landua to wrangle the situation. Eventually, Landua called the production (in an poetic twist, 93 days into the shoot) and told Fincher he could cut the film together, then think about “reshoots.”

Q: What did you do when they pulled the plug?
Fincher: As upset as I was, I was so exhausted, I was glad to get back on the plane. We were told they were going to hold the sets until Joe Roth could take a look at the picture, but they decided it was more cost effective to cut the film and see exactly what was needed – what’s laughingly known as the surgical strike. So we assembled it – and it was like two hours and seventeen minutes – and we showed it to them. It was quite a sobering experience.
Q: I saw a list of your reshoots that was seven pages long.
Fincher: No, no. You must have seen the wish list…..
Q: So to this day there’s still a dispute over how to handle the ending?
Fincher: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. In my most depressed moments, people say, “You know, they didn’t know how they wanted to end Casablanca.” Hopefully this is Casablanca.

It wouldn’t be.

Alien 3 is far from a bad film, it’s just not an Alien film, really, and it lacks the unified vision and cohesion of a flick that has had the steady hand of a director guiding it through the production process.

However, as far as film revisionist history goes, 20th Century Fox wasn’t done screwing with Fincher.

For the definitive DVD box set, The Alien Quadrilogy, Fincher was asked to contribute his directors commentary to the film. He declined, meaning that Ridley Scott, James Cameron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet all got their commentary tracks and interviews for the documentaries on each film included in the package.

DVD producer Charles de Lauzirika was in charge of assembling the DVD package and – much to 20th Century Fox’s horror – submitted the third documentary titled: Wreckage and Rape: The Making of Alien³.

DVD review site Digital Bits reports:

More than thirty minutes of material that was produced for this documentary was cut at the last minute. You might be wondering what difference thirty minutes could make in a three hour documentary. A big difference. Gone now is much of the honesty and truth about the hell director David Fincher went through on the production. Among the footage lost were actual moments with Fincher on the set, where you saw his frustration and anger. You saw his struggles with producers. You heard from Sigourney and the other cast and crew members talking about the problems, and what a raw deal Fincher got. You even heard from the film’s producers and Fox executives talking about what went wrong. Simply put, this disc was about as good a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Alien³ as you could ever hope to get, short of Fincher returning to address the production himself (and he WAS asked to do so, but declined). Unfortunately, what you get now, while it still does contain some of the above (including material that you’ve never seen before), it sort of teases the stuff you really want to know, then glosses by it.

As a result of this drastic, studio-ordered cutting, Lauzirika took his name off the project, using a pseudonym in the DVD credits for the sixth disc.

What little information remains about Fincher’s horrible tribulations trying to make an artistic statement for his debut film resides in long forgotten interviews. Alien 3 ended up making money with its international release, spawning a fourth film written by Joss Whedon.

Fincher went on to direct Se7en.

Halle Berry in talks for The Surrogate

Liam — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Halle Berry, who recently won the Decade of Hotness Award at Spike TV’s 2009 Guys Choice Awards, is in talks to join The Surrogate according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, not to be confused with Surrogates staring Bruce Willis, is based on a 2004 book by Kathryn Mackel and centers on a couple desperate to have a child who find themselves in an unbearable position when they find out the surrogate they hired to carry their baby is insane. Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers) was hired to direct last week, and Ralph Winter (X-Men trilogy) is producing.

Halle Berry is in talks to star in “The Surrogate” for 20th Century Fox. The move follows Paul Verhoeven’s boarding to develop and direct the thriller, which Ralph Winter is producing along with Deborah Giarratana, Robin Guthrie and Susana Zepeda.
Berry is interested in the part and Fox is keen to have her do it, though official dealmaking has yet to begin. Berry would play the wife who wants to have the child.

This would be Berry’s return to the big screen after having time off to reproduce. After winning the Worst Actress Razzi for Catwoman Berry has been trying to return to her Oscar roots with dramas such as Things We Lost in the Fire. The problem with that is smaller films don’t get big releases or attention (unless they get Oscars) so it feels like Halle has been gone for years. Personally i’d like her to make a few fun films like Swordfish, or maybe hitch a ride on another action franchise (non-superhero).

Gavin Hood and Tom Rothman talk Wolverine leak and on set clashes

Liam — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:59:06 +0000

It has been three days since an uncompleted version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked onto the internet by someone who now has the FBI hunting them down like the scum they are. (I’m sure they haven’t been sleeping very well. The guy who leaked The Hulk apparently got around 7 years in jail). In that time we have had a statement from 20th Century Fox on the matter, and now Fox Entertainment Co-Chairman Tom Rothman has spoken out about the leak. From Entertainment Weekly:

“The version that went out is unfinished. It’s about 10 minutes shorter, doesn’t have key scenes, it wasn’t edited, and none of the effects shots were in any remotely final form,” Rothman tells EW. “It’s a complete misrepresentation of the film and is deeply unfair to the people who have worked on it for years.”
“The picture is not the kind of movie people get the whole experience of by watching on their computer. But other than The Hulk, I don’t think a movie with this kind of anticipation has been stolen. And it’s also a big deal because of how early it is.” Meaning, there’s a whole month before the movie is in theaters, and that gives fans a long time to get their fill of X-Men and move on.
Rothman is touting a bunch of footage shot in Canada earlier this year that he says is not even included in the version online. And he insists that both he and Hugh Jackman have vowed to stop at nothing to get the movie out to as many fans as possible. “Hugh was heartbroken and hurt when he found out. He’s lived with this thing for 10 years. But he’s also a man and knows that life isn’t fair, and is more determined than ever,” Rothman says. “Hugh and I exchanged e-mails: Basically, we’re not going to let the bastards win. But we didn’t use the word ‘bastards.’ That’s a slightly sanitized version.”

Whether you are a fan of Fox and Rothman or not, no studio deserves to have their movie leaked to the masses when people have been working on it for the past two years. It is too early to say what impact this will have on the box office. I suspect the majority of people who have downloaded the leak are either X-Men fans or people who download movies on a regular basis. The fans will go and see it on the big screen regardless (most likely multiple times), and those who download often probably wouldn’t have paid to see it anyway. I think this leak will have little impact on the average moviegoer, who will probably see it based on the trailers and/or their familiarity with the X-Men franchise. Whatever happens, Fox will probably be ploughing more effort into marketing than previously planned as the release date nears.

In other Wolverine news, director Gavin Hood spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about rumors regarding on-set clashes between him and Tom Rothman. He says that while they did had disagreements, it never came to full blown arguments and the differences were settled with ‘dignity and sincerity’. Watch below:

I suspect this was filmed before the leak, which is probably why there is no mention of it. Like Hugh, i’m sure Gavin Hood was angry and disappointed about the leak. Directors await the day that their movie will be released to the public and everyone can be entertained and give their opinion on it (whether it be good or bad). It is a huge shame someone had go and ruin it!

Oh no he di’int! Watchmen writer compares Fox to Satan

Liam — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:16:43 +0000

During the whole Warner Bros/Fox Watchmen case we didn’t really hear much from the creative team behind it, as it was really a matter for the studios. However now everything is sorted Watchmen and X-Men writer David Hayter has spoken out and made some controversial comments about 20th Century Fox:

“I had worked for 20th Century Fox before, and I was fully under the belief that they had the potential to shut down the movie and remake it themselves out of pure spite and meanness. They’re a rough group of people … and somewhat ethically challenged.”
“… My experience told me that they could shut down this movie, and lock it away in Rupert’s vault … and make it the most unseen desired cult movie of all time … but I was extremely concerned. Many producer friends of mine said the same thing as Alex – that they’re just going for money or whatever — but I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, but there’s something beyond money going on at that studio and it has to do with … Satan.”

Listen to the complete audio over at Hollywood Outbreak

I guess he won’t be writing for them anytime soon…

Fox pick up Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Liam — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:26:08 +0000

It has been one month since Disney decided to ditch the Narnia franchise, however it has now found a new home at 20th Century Fox. If all goes to plan the film will start shooting at the end of summer this year, with a release date of December 2010.

From Variety:

Ultimately, Fox’s commitment to the summer start date is contingent upon Walden’s selection of a writer. Richard LaGravanese penned the most recent draft that both Walden and Fox were happy with, but there’s a question about his availability because he has been adapting Sara Gruen’s bestseller “Water for Elephants” for Fox 2000.
After budget and script concerns are settled, Fox and Walden are expected to greenlight the film.
Ben Barnes, Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley are reprising their roles as Caspian, Edmund and Lucy, respectively. New to the production is Will Poulter (”Son of Rambo”), who will portray Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Pic is being directed by Michael Apted, with Mark Johnson and Andrew Adamson producing.

This is good news. Fox have been looking for a fantasy franchise for a while so this seems like the perfect match for them. With most of the creative team returning it will be hard to screw this up. Even if Fox are making it.

Watchmen case resolved

Liam — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:54:15 +0000

After a long and exciting legal battle 20th Century Fox and Warner. Bros have finally come to a settlement over the rights to Watchmen, and who gets what. Terms of the agreement will not be disclosed, but it is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film’s box office. Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it own a piece of the Watchmen property going forward.

Below is an official statement from both studios:

Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox have resolved their dispute regarding the rights to the upcoming motion picture Watchmen in a confidential settlement. Warner Bros acknowledges that Fox acted in good faith in bringing its claims, which were asserted prior to the start of principal photography. Fox acknowledges that Warner Bros. acted in good faith in defending against those claims Warner Bros. and Fox, like all Watchmen fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film’s March 6 release in theatres.

It looks like we will still be seeing Watchmen on it’s original release date, March 6th!

Watchmen release date decision soon

Liam — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:08:55 +0000

If you plan on pre-booking your tickets to see Zack Snyder’s Watchmen I suggest you wait until after the 20th January, as that is when a judge will decide whether it can still keep it’s March release date.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Lawyers for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. have agreed to let a federal judge decide whether Warner Bros. will be allowed to release Watchmen on March 6, forgoing a jury trial that could have put the high-profile film’s future into even longer limbo.
In court papers filed Monday with U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, attorneys for Fox and Warner Bros. jointly said they would let the judge decide Jan. 20 whether Fox could block the film’s theatrical distribution as Fox has been seeking all along as part of its copyright infringement lawsuit against Warner Bros.

I hope we will still be able to see Watchmen on it’s original release date. If not the film could be delayed for months!

Fox want to delay Watchmen. Riots expected.

Liam — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:16:35 +0000

According to The Hollywood Reporter an attorney for 20th Century Fox said the studio will continue to seek an order delaying the release of Watchmen.

U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess last week agreed with Fox that Warner Bros. had infringed its copyright by developing and shooting the superhero flick, scheduled for release March 6.
Feess said Monday that he plans to hold a trial Jan. 20 to decide remaining issues.

If Watchmen does get delayed there is no doubt that fans will be pissed off. Earlier this year ComicBookMovie got the chance to interview one angry fan, and if I were Fox I would be shaking in my boots!

CBM: What exactly are you planning on doing?
Wyatt: If I get enough support, I would like to go picket Fox Studios and even perhaps the local Wolverine opening night. Aside form that I want to cover up all Fox movie posters with signs that read: Who Watches the Watchmen?
CBM: What would you tell the Fox execs if you could get a meeting with them?
Wyatt: They have no idea who they a f**king with. Watchmen fans are not regular comic fans. We’re f**king crazy. There will be retaliations if they keep this nonsense up. Also I would say that they had there chance and blew it. Stop being assholes and give the people what the want.

20th Century Fox were not the most loved studio to begin with, so this will not help their image one bit (however I doubt they will care). Ideally things will get sorted and Warner Bros. will just have to give Fox a big chunck of money, although I doubt it will be that simple.

Expect more updates on this in the upcoming days/weeks.

20th Century Fox owns the distribution rights to Watchmen

Liam — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:36:59 +0000

Warner Bros. will not be having a very good Christmas this year. A judge has ruled that:

20th Century Fox owns the distribution rights to “Watchmen,” representing a setback for Warner Bros.’ plans to release the pic in March.
“Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture,” the ruling said.

This means that even though Warner Bros. have spent a huge amount of money making the film, they do not have the right to release it, which sucks for them. On the other hand 20th Century Fox have been given another movie to release in 2009, which means they will now be very happy and possibly getting drunk as we speak.

While I have sympathy for Warner Bros, they should have made sure they had the rights sorted before they spent $100+ million making the movie. However, Fox were a bit sly as they waited until Warner Bros were nearly finished filming before bringing the rights issue to attention.

It is likely that Fox and Warner Bros. will work out some sort of deal, however whatever happens Warner Bros will be hit hard financially. At this moment it is not yet known if Watchmen will still be released in March 2009.