We started writing about Lawless here back in 2010, when it used to be called The Wettest County in the World. At one point, names like Ryan Gosling, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, and Paul Dano were all in talks to join, but despite development struggles over the years, Australian director John Hillcoat finally found enough funding to pull the project together. A true story about three bootlegging brothers, the finished product has a terrific cast that includes Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, and Mia Wasikowska. The first full trailer has arrived online, so check it out after the jump and let us know what you think in the comments.

Lawless hits theaters on August 31st, 2012.

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According to Variety Guy Pearce, who was most recently seen in Lockout, is in final talks to join the cast of Iron Man 3. The site says Pearce will play the geneticist Aldrich Killian.

In the comics Killian is responsible for putting a genome-attacking viral creation known as Extremis into the hands of terrorists. The plot of the film will borrow elements from Warren Ellis’ six-issue “Iron Man: Extremis” comic books which focuses heavily on the spread of the Extremis virus through nanotechnology.

Pearce joins a cast that already includes Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, and Scarlett Johansson. Sir Ben Kingsley was recently set to play the villain, but specifics on his character remain under-wraps.

Shane Black is directing, and filming is set to begin in May. Disney has set the Iron Man 3 release date for May 3, 2013.

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Fox’s viral campaign for this summer’s Prometheus seems to be in full swing right now and this awesome promo is the latest to come from that. David is an 8th generation Wayland type robot, powered by Verizon apparently and you can see the clip right after the break.

Now this is what I call great viral marketing, a clip that’s made to look like any commercial you see today on TV, only this is for a robot, one that you can only find in the film Prometheus unfortunately. I mean who doesn’t want a real David around the house? I know I do, my garden needs work and he would be the perfect candidate for that unethical job. Also, after Shame, I’m sure there are loads of women out there (and even guys) that would buy a Michael Fassbender the second he becomes available, probably for stuff that’s more NC-17 if you know what I mean.

Joke aside, Prometheus is a prequel to the 1979 original Alien, directed by the same Ridley Scott and starring Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, and Patrick Wilson among others.

Prometheus opens June 1st in the UK and June 8th in North America.

So would you buy a David/Michael Fassbender if this promo was real?

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The nice thing about Lockout is it moves fairly quickly. The not so nice thing about Lockout is…it moves fairly quickly.

Most of the 95 minutes whiz right by until the underwhelming, and disorganized, climatic sequences. It’s as if the filmmakers slammed on the brakes in the car but all their passengers are still flailing around inside. Then again, what do you expect when you take a plot points from the Die Hard and Escape from New York/L.A. franchises and toss them up into space? Hell, they even ripped some angles from 1993’s Demolition Man (still a guilty pleasure of mine).

The generic story takes place on a space station that is now the country’s maximum security prison. Every sadistic inmate is cryogenically frozen these days and this gets the attention of the President’s journalistic daughter, Emilie (Maggie Grace). She flies up there to see if this treatment is having negative side-effects on the prisoners. Of course, the prisoners somehow manage to arise from their chilly naps and overrun the station.

While all the top brass realize the President’s pride and joy is being held captive up there, they cut a deal with special-ops man named Snow (Guy Pearce). Snow is accused of being a traitor to the U.S. but his apparent skills are just what they need to breach the hostile space station and secure Emilie. The constantly wise-cracking Snow accepts the terms of the mission, for he may have his own agenda for heading up into space.

If it wasn’t for Guy Pearce channelling his inner-John McClane persona from Die Hard; and splicing that with Kurt Russell’s demeanor from Escape from L.A. (not New York), this flick would be worthy of a walkout halfway through. The only other element that keeps one interested is the presumed leader of the resurrected inmates played by Vincent Regan. He has a quiet, yet deadly, charm about him and that’s with the script giving the guy just a few blurbs of dialogue here-and-there and occasionally putting a bullet in someone’s head.

Aside from those two redeeming qualities, the rest of this is a jumbled and shaky (thank you cinematography) clipboard of random boring action sequences with a little bit of conversation tossed in between. It’s essentially one giant trailer. So for those that would like some rationale or just a smidge of elaboration on a storyline, don’t even bother strolling into this sucker. There is not a shred of backstory on how society came to this point and/or why Guy Pearce is such a badass. It is what it is; a mindless B-movie that had the benefit of affording some passable CGI.

Overall, Lockout is the ideal movie jaunt for some adrenaline junkies. But even they will forget about this mash-up, despite Guy Pearce’s charismatic delivery, before they press their hands upon the theater exit doors.

RATING: 2 out of 5

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Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is high on our list of anticipated movies of 2012 here at Filmonic – you can read a list of what we hope to be the best sci-fi films of the year right here – and the marketing machine is slowly starting to turn as its summer release date approaches. But instead of the same old lame tactics, Scott and his team have put together something really cool: a TED talk from the fictional character Guy Pearce plays in the movie, answering the link between Prometheus and Alien.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and is a real conference that happens every year featuring free talks from luminaries in innovation in fields across the globe. This one is a bit different, though – it comes from the year 2023. Take a look after the jump.

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After teasing us over the past few days 20th Century Fox has released the first official trailer for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus which stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, Patrick Wilson, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce and Rafe Spall.

You can watch the trailer below. It definitely has an Alien-vibe to it, and meets the hype that’s been building. Hopefully the actual movie does too.

Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to the genre he helped define, creating an original science fiction epic set in the most dangerous corners of the universe. The film takes a team of scientists and explorers on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life’s ultimate mystery.

20th Century Fox will release Prometheus on June 8th 2012.

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The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly contains our first good look at Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which stars Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba, Patrick Wilson, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green.

In the image below we see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘s Noomi Rapace as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, a researcher and archaeologist. In an interview last month Rapace said Shaw was the “most complete person” she’s ever played, and she “turns into a fighter” halfway through the film after “a lot of things happen”.

Also in the image is Logan Marshall-Green (Devil) who plays a crewman onboard the space ship and the love interest of Elizabeth Shaw. A blonde Michael Fassbender plays an android named David.

Other images show us the characters of Charlize Theron and Idris Elba.

Ridley Scott, director of “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” returns to the genre he helped define. With PROMETHEUS, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

With 20th Century Fox’s marketing campaign seemingly under-way we can probably expect the teaser trailer to hit sometime soon. Ridley Scott’s return to sci-fi hits June 8, 2012.

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Of all the movies promoted at Comic-Con 2010, I was the most surprised by Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. With the veteran hand of Guillermo del Toro writing and producing, and first time director Troy Nixey at the helm, it looked moody, atmospheric, and – most importantly for a horror film – downright scary. They showed us the opening scene, and I was captivated by what we saw; excellent production design, a frightening concept, and some well-placed sound effects worked wonders on that audience, and had me leaving the convention anticipating the film’s release. So it brings me no pleasure to report discouraging news: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a lifeless, boring “horror” story almost completely devoid of scary moments. For me, it’s the biggest theatrical disappointment of 2011 so far.

The story is simple enough: young Sally (Bailee Madison) is sent to Rhode Island to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). They all live in a spooky old mansion they’re renovating; it once belonged to an enigmatic artist named Emerson Blackwood who dies at the hands of little demon/fairy/mythical figures in the aforementioned prologue. The creatures demand the price of one human life every time they surface, and their diet consists solely of children’s teeth. When Sally discovers the basement where they live, they spend the entire movie trying to convince her to come “play” with them.

Sally’s a child of divorce, and an annoying one at that: she sulks around a lot doing typical divorced child things – being ice cold to dad’s new girlfriend, wandering off by herself, you get the picture. She’s intrigued by the creepy whispers she hears calling her name, and she’s so desperate for attention that she repeatedly sneaks off to meet the creatures, ignoring the orders of her workaholic father (never seen THAT character before). Bailee Madison has some good years ahead of her on the silver screen, but this is not a breakout performance from her. [I'd guess she was cast due to her striking resemblance to Katie Holmes (it's uncanny, really), but that makes no sense in the context of the movie, since Holmes' character isn't her mother.] Sally does so many stupid things – all typical haunted house movie stuff – that I couldn’t root for her. By the end, I was secretly hoping she’d die, just so the message of the movie would be one guarding against stupidity.

It’s safe to say one of the most important elements in any film bearing Guillermo del Toro’s name is creature design. In Blade II, the Hellboy franchise, and his most critically acclaimed movie, Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro has shown an affinity (and affection) for crafting interesting creatures that play important parts in the stories he tells. In Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, they were nothing more than miniature hunchback people with small fangs, less than a foot tall and not threatening in any convincing way. It would take very little effort to simply kick one in the face, and the force of such a kick would surely kill it, but apparently that concept never enters the mind of anyone in the film. The mythology of these creatures (traditionally, one of del Toro’s strengths) is wildly inconsistent in this movie, another one of the film’s many let-downs. The little things whine about how it hurts them to be in the light – occasionally they’ll scream in pain when someone shines a flashlight on them – but late in the movie there’s a scene in which a creature wanders through a brightly lit dinner party with no ill side effects, and yet another scene in which someone shines a light directly on one and it just scowls and growls without running away.

No one could ever call Guillermo del Toro lazy – he’s one of the busiest people in Hollywood. He’s got more projects in development than anyone else I can think of (except for maybe DiCaprio), and he even spent two years developing The Hobbit before stepping down and letting Peter Jackson take the reins. But Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark seems to be a result of del Toro’s time and attention being stretched too thin. The movie has no pulse, the pacing is terrible, and it’s not actually scary. That last aspect is what I found particularly insulting, considering del Toro’s talks about how the MPAA gave the film an R rating for “pervasive scariness” even though they didn’t have to rely on torture and gore. The MPAA apparently consists of a few hyper-sensitive seven-year-old children, because I doubt anyone from another age group would find this movie so devastatingly frightening that they’d give it an R rating.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of the movie is that almost nothing relevant happens for the majority of the run time. After the opening sequence, nothing happens for a solid hour. Then there’s one jump scare, and nothing happens for a while. There’s even a potentially scary scene in a bathtub, but because these creatures hardly ever do anything worth being scared of, it’s next to impossible to see them as a serious threat. That’s the main reason this movie is the biggest disappointment of the year: squandered potential. With the talent involved here, this should have been a home run. But a lazy script and mediocre direction result in a movie that just doesn’t sustain interest. Until next time…

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The U.S. rights for the Guillermo del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (starring Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes) have finally been picked up, by FilmDistrict. At one point, the film was set to open last month, but it has now been given an August 12th, 2011 release date.

The film was one of those “orphaned” when Disney’s Miramax label was shut down last year, and has since been floating around, trying to find a home – luckily it’s found one. It received an incredibly positive response when it was screened at Comic-Con 2010.

Hopefully you haven’t forgotten about this project in the time it was in limbo – in case you don’t already know, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a remake of the 1983 TV movie of the same name. The new version was written and shot with the intention of receiving a PG-13 rating, but instead received a non-negiotable R. Nice. A press release for the film described it as such:

Sally Hurst (Bailee Madison), a lonely, withdrawn child, has just arrived in Rhode Island to live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) at the 19th-century mansion they are restoring. While exploring the sprawling estate, the young girl discovers a hidden basement, undisturbed since the strange disappearance of the mansion’s builder a century ago. When Sally unwittingly lets loose a race of ancient, dark-dwelling creatures who conspire to drag her down into the mysterious house’s bottomless depths, she must convince Alex and Kim that it’s not a fantasy—before the evil lurking in the dark consumes them all.

And back in August, a teaser was released for the film, which you can watch below:

This is one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The last fantastic films that del Toro was involved with were Pan’s Labyrinth (which he directed, of course) in 2006, and The Orphanage (which he produced) in 2007. That’s a while ago. I love his visual style, and while he has a huge number of productions lined up, getting people excited for them, most of them are aeons into the future. We won’t see his next directing gig, At the Mountains of Madness, until late in 2012 at the earliest, but hopefully Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will provide a small tide-over. It looks great.

FilmDistrict is a newly-founded distribution outfit, and its first film will be Insidious, directed by James Wan (the original, brilliant Saw) and written be Leigh Whannell (Saw I-III). Insidious is opening April 1st.

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The Hollywood Reporter announced yesterday that Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska (just in case you didn’t see that above) have all joined the cast of the novel adaptation The Wettest County in the World, the next film from director John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road). Read more after the break.

The four newcomers to the project join the previously cast Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy.

The Wettest County in the World is based on the novel of the same name by Matt Borundant, who in turn based his book on the true story of his relatives. I’ll reprint the synopsis of the book from our previous article on Hardy and LaBeouf’s casting; thanks to /Film:

In 1928, a pair of thieves accost Bondurant’s real life great-uncle Forrest at his Franklin County, Va., restaurant. They’re after a large cache of bootlegging money and end up cutting Forrest’s throat. The story of his survival and his trek to a hospital 12 miles away has taken on mythical proportions by the time Sherwood Anderson arrives in Franklin County in 1934 to research a magazine piece on the area’s prolific moonshiners. Soon after Anderson’s arrival, two anonymous men appear at the same hospital, one with legs meticulously shattered from ankle to hip, the other one castrated, with the by-products of the deed deposited in a jar of moonshine. The arc of the story lies between the attack on Forrest and that on the two men.

And word on who’s playing who:

Pearce will play an overly violent deputy who comes down hard on the Bondurants while Oldman will play a gangster who engages the boys to deliver alcohol.

Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right) plays LeBeouf’s love interest, a local Mennonite girl. Clarke (TV’s Chicago Code) is playing the brother to LaBeouf and Hardy.

This sounds like a great new film for Hillcoat; The Proposition is one of the best Westerns I’ve seen, and The Road was a calm, thoughtful take on the over-done post-apocalypse genre (although fell victim to some rather misleading trailers). A gangster film will add to a nice sense of variety. He’s getting together a hell of a cast here, with some great actors; but as usual, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing what the brilliant Gary Oldman will bring to his role.

The Wettest County in the World is being adapted for the screen by musician Nick Cave, who also co-wrote Hillcoat’s debut Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, and scripted The Proposition. He composed the scores for The Proposition and The Road too (the latter of which was beautiful).

This is yet another film to get excited for, I guess. Filming is scheduled to begin on February 28th.

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