The Academy released a list of 15 films in contention for the 2010 Visual Effects Oscar last month, and now they’ve narrowed the list down to 7 films. Here they are:

Avatar
District 9
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2012

Later this month members of the visual effects branch will watch excerpts from the movies, and the list will then be narrowed down to 3. Earlier this year it was a showdown between Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with Button’s ageing effects coming out on top.

If I were a betting man i’d put my money on Avatar. It’ll be interesting to see which 3 make it through to the next round.

Which film do you think should win the Visual Effects Oscar?

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I think James Cameron best described Terminator Salvation when he said that it was good, but it lacked a certain Je ne sais quoi. It didn’t reinvent the mythos, and it wasn’t that special in any way, unlike the first two Terminator movies. However despite poor US box office takings and negative-mixed reviews it did have a few cool trailers. The trailer below is probably the best one, and it was nominated for a 2009 Golden Trailer Award. I actually like this trailer more than I liked the film.

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The 82nd Academy Awards will be held next March and the 15 movies nominated for the Visual Effects Oscar have been revealed. Here they are:

Angels & Demons
Avatar
Coraline
Disney’s A Christmas Caro
District 9
G-Force
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Sherlock Holmes
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2012
Watchmen
Where the Wild Things Are

In early January the list will be narrowed down to 7, then later in the month members of the visual effects branch will watch excerpts from the movies, and the list will be narrowed down to 3. Earlier this year it was a showdown between Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with Button’s ageing effects coming out on top.

Since Avatar Day when we got a glimpse at 15 minutes of footage I’ve had my money on Avatar winning, and from the early reviews it seems it will be a serious contender. I’m glad District 9 got a nod. Out of all the films nominated it had the lowest budget ($30 million) and the guys at WETA did a great job with those financial constraints.

Which visual effects wowed you in 2009? Who do you want to win the Visual Effects Oscar?

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In the latest issue of Total Film magazine there is a 36 page special on James Cameron’s Avatar, and while the film is the main topic of discussion they threw in a few questions on Terminator Salvation and the upcoming Alien prequel which Ridley Scott will be directing.

What did you think of Terminator Salvation?
It didn’t quite have the emotional power that it should have had. I thought Sam was great, very powerful, and Christian… people have criticised him for being one-note but that’s part of the character. He was playing a guy who’s furiously dedicated to the survival of the human species. Maybe more could have been done with that. In T2 we showed the consequences. It drove Sarah insane.

Was McG the man for the job?
McG’s a strong shooter and he honoured the iconic touchstones of the first two movies – almost too much. I actually felt Salvation is like Aliens, in that it’s a fan making a sequel to a movie they loved.

It must be tough for Cameron to see other people’s take on his creation, especially as both T3 and Salvation have been disappointing. The rights are being auctioned off at some point this month so hopefully a competent studio buy them, instead of two shady producers like last time.

Now for another sci-fi franchise, Alien. Earlier this year Ridley Scott decided to return to the franchise after a 30 year absence, and it may have been Cameron who inspired him.

Ridley Scott is talking about doing an Alien prequel
That’s a strange move for him. I mean, Ridley and I talked over lunch maybe 10 years ago and I said, “Look, I’ll write it and produce it, you direct it, it’ll ****ing kick ass!” And he was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” And nothing happened. And then they did Alien vs. Predator, and that kind of pissed in the soup. I think Ridley really should do science fiction. He made the two most iconic science-fiction films of the 20th century. When he came to visit me [on the set of Avatar] I said to him, “Quit ****ing around with these wine movies in the south of France, make another science fiction film.” And he saw the technique we were using and got all fired up about it. He turned to his producer and said, “Why am I doing this Robin Hood? I should be doing science fiction!”

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During the months leading up to Terminator Salvation‘s release director McG revealed that a scene involving a topless Moon Bloodgood in the rain had been filmed, but there was a chance it wouldn’t make the final cut as they wanted to keep a PG-13 rating. Bloodgood herself described the scene as “a beautiful shot” and under the circumstances her character was in it wasn’t gratuitous, saying “Did you ever just want to get naked and connect to someone? Imagine the world is coming to an end and you just want to connect with someone and you’re like, ‘I don’t care.’”

Well the scene didn’t make it into the film, but it will be on the DVD as a deleted scene. It can also be seen below:

[Contains minor boobage]

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Back in 2007 producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek bought the rights to the Terminator franchise for $25 million. This was a bit of surprise because they hadn’t really done anything, apart from a movie called Cook-Off! which they starred in themselves. They then made Terminator Salvation which wasn’t a bad movie, although it could have been better. It wasn’t really a flop as it made $370+ million worldwide, although it should have made more than $125 million in the US.

Now according to the L.A Times the Terminator rights will be trading hands once again.

Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, who acquired the science-fiction franchise in 2007 for $25 million and produced this year’s sequel “Terminator Salvation,” are now looking to sell them partially or outright as several companies owned by the duo work their way through bankruptcy.

Anderson and Kubicek’s Halcyon Holding Group has engaged financial advisory firm FTI Capital Advisors, pending bankruptcy court approval, to “evaluate strategic alternatives,” according to a statement. Since Halcyon’s only valuable asset is the Terminator rights, any deal would involve an investment in, or outright sale, of them.

A Halcyon spokesperson said that the company will pay back all of its debts in full following a Terminator transaction.

A few months ago director McG was talking about setting Terminator 5 in a pre-Judgment Day 2011, but I doubt there will be another further developments until the rights are sorted out.

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I like Black20. In the past they have given us PG 300 and Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman, and now we have Transforminators which, as you can probably guess, is a mash-up of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Terminator Salvation. Watch below!

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Terminator Salvation will be released later this month by Warner Bros in the US and Sony overseas, however some studio drama may occur regarding who will finance and distribute Terminator 5, which is currently in development.

From Variety:

MGM has a 30-day right of first refusal to finance and distribute the fifth “Terminator” film, a right earned through the settlement of a lawsuit between the studio and Halcyon partners Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson. According to sources, MGM has every intention of making a serious play for the franchise, potentially trumping Warner Bros., which is distributing “Terminator Salvation” in domestic territories, and Sony, which is releasing the film overseas.

The distribution drama promises to be a real cliffhanger that will begin once Halcyon delivers its demands to MGM along with a first draft of the screenplay for the fifth “Terminator.”

“Salvation” was a much riskier prospect then than the fifth “Terminator” is now. At the time, MGM made its decision knowing only that franchise linchpin Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t returning, and the studio had only an early script by “Terminator 3″ scribes John Brancato and Michael Ferris they developed with “T3″ helmer Jonathan Mostow. That script has changed significantly, with uncredited work done by Jonah Nolan, Paul Haggis, Shawn Ryan and Anthony Zuiker. Though Halcyon hasn’t yet set a writer for the fifth film, the prospects are strong because McG is returning as director, and Christian Bale will reprise as John Connor.

The MGM-Halcyon drama may not play out until a year from now, when Kubicek and Anderson get an early script, but the stakes may well be supremacy for summer 2011 or 2012.

As long as a movie is good I don’t really care which studio is behind it, however you have to feel a bit sorry for Warner Bros (even if they do earn billions). First they had the Watchmen/Fox legal battle and now they could lose a potential franchise they set up.

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Warner Bros have released a 5 minute featurette which shows a scene involving Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) taking on The Harvester, or as director McG puts it “The Harvester attacking humanity”. After the clip we go behind the scenes and see how they filmed it. I usually don’t post clips because I think you should watch the film in it’s entirety, rather than watching 20 minutes worth of the film beforehand in clip format, however this is cool and it is sponsored by Pizza Hut. I like pizza.

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Earlier this year McG said that he expected the ending of Terminator Salvation would “piss off a lot of people”, and now we know what that ending would have been (it has since been changed).

From io9:

That was at a time when there was a very dark ending. There was a great irony in the way this film shook down. There was this leak that Connor dies and they put Connor’s face on top of the machine body of Marcus. Everybody went, “Booooooo, what’s that?” That’s half of it [the ending]. We had a jet-black ending. Connor dies, we’re in a room with all the people we care about. You take Connor’s likeness, you put it on the living machine of Marcus. He sits up, now looking like Christian Bale, takes a gun, kills Kate, kills Kyle, kills Star, kills everybody, eyes flare red, [snaps] the end.

If this ending was still part of the film I think it would piss off a lot of people. Everyone goes into a movie expecting a happy and fulfilling conclusion, so this would have been a major shock to the system. I quite like it when movies do something different so I would probably enjoyed this ending (despite the murdering).

To see the new ending we’ll have to go and see the film in a few weeks time.

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