Of the many films James Franco has directed in the past few years (seriously, look at his IMDb page), there's one that will likely garner more attention than the others: The Disaster Artist, which chronicles the making of Tommy Wiseau's infamously terrible 2003 film The Room. That movie became a cult sensation, with a fandom that was completely baffled at how awful the movie was and how it managed to get made. Greg Sestero, who co-starred in The Room opposite the enigmatic and inexperienced Wiseau, wrote a book about the making of the movie called The Disaster Artist, and now Franco is directing a film adaptation of that book and playing Wiseau in the film. Dave Franco will play Sestero, and James recently shared a photo of the two of them in character on Instagram:

💥"THE DISASTER ARTIST: The making of THE ROOM."💥 It has begun!!!!!

A photo posted by James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) on Dec 7, 2015 at 6:10pm PST

The movie has been gaining cast members over the past few days, with The Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson notably joining the production, and Hannibal Buress, Seth Rogen, Jacki Weaver, Ari Graynor, and Andrew Santino also signing on. Now THR reports that model/actress Kate Upton has also joined the cast, and some are speculating that she'll play Juliette Daniels, who played Lisa in The Room — though her role is yet to be officially confirmed.

So far, Upton has leveraged her modeling career into securing parts in Tower Heist, The Three Stooges, and The Other Woman. She'll next be seen in William H. Macy's new film The Layover, opposite upcoming Baywatch star Alexandra Daddario (who replaced Lea Michele in the film).

Artist Joshua Budich has created this fantastic series of Spaceballs poster art that wonderfully spoofs Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Spaceballs: The Schwartz Awakens sounds like it would be the perfect title for a Spaceballs sequel if one were ever to happen.

Earlier this year, Mel Brooks did confirm that he was working on a sequel. It's tentatively being called Spaceballs: The Search For More Money. There have been no updates on this movie since Brooks confirmed he was woking on it, but he's hoping to start shooting it in 2016. You can read more about it here. 

The poster you see here were made to look like the classic Star Wars posters Olly Moss did for the saga, which I also included below. Moss had this to say about this Spaceballs parody set:

“As an artist, you make your work and you push it out into the ether. People are free to react to it however they want. Whether that means they buy a print from you, or print it out themselves, or even adapt it into their own work. [Parody] is not a price you pay. It’s a reward you’ve earned. You were lucky enough to make something with which people connected, and it got a reaction. You can’t police what that reaction is.”

These 18 x 24 inch screenprints will go on sale Wednesday, December 9th, at 2pm Central time at Nakatomi Inc. Thanks to io9 for the poster art!

In Return of the Jedi, it was revealed that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are brother and sister. We know that The Force is strong in their family, but if you were expecting to see Leia use The Force in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it's not going to happen. You might be disappointed to hear that, but there's a reason behind it.

When trying to figure out how to handle that aspect of Leia's character, director J.J. Abrams had conversations with the writers and even actress Carrie Fisher on how they would deal with it. In the end, Leia basically made the decision not to train in the ways of The Force because there were more important things for her to focus on. Abrams tell IGN:

It was a great question, and one that we talked about quite a bit, even with Carrie [Fisher]…Why did she not take advantage of this natural Force strength that this character had. And one of the answers was that it was simply a choice that she made, that her decision to run the Rebellion, and ultimately this Resistance, and consider herself a General, as opposed to a Jedi. It was simply a choice that she took.

That makes complete sense. When you train for The Force, you have to make a serious long-term commitment. Leia just had way too much shit to take care of, especially after the rebellion destroyed Death Star II. By the time we get to the events in The Force Awakens, she's a General.

Abrams goes on to tease that she will show some aspects of her Force ability, he describes her as being "Force strong," and he calls her ability an "intrinsic piece of her character." We'll see exactly what he's talking about when the movie is released. I'm sure she'll have that connection with Luke, but I don't think we'll see her fighting with a lightsaber. 

Neal Acree first made the jump from film and television to composing game music when he scored the opening cinematic to Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade in 2006. His list covers every... View Full Post on GameTyrant

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Netflix has a pretty impressive track record so far when it comes to original programming. The streaming service got into creating its own shows back in 2013 when the political drama House of Cards debuted, and they quickly added shows like Orange is the New Black, a fourth season of Arrested Development, and then series like Bojack Horseman, Sense8, Marco Polo, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None, and more, eventually including Marvel shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Some of those are more beloved than others, to be sure, but seemingly overnight, Netflix became a major entertainment destination not just for their ever-changing library of movies, but arguably even more for its own content.

Gird your loins, TV fans: more Netflix shows are on the way. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke at the UBS Media Conference yesterday, and according to The Verge:

Sarandos announced that Netflix will reach a total of 31 scripted shows over the course of 2016 in a speech at the UBS Media Conference this morning. That's almost double the 16 such shows the service aired in 2015. Sarandos also shared that Netflix is working on 10 new feature films, 30 kids' shows, 12 documentaries, and 10 stand-up specials. "It's not just a lot of volume," said Sarandos. "This is quality stuff."

As much as I'm excited to hear that more quality TV shows are on the way, I must admit I'm already having trouble keeping up with all of the great shows that are already out there. The phrase "Peak TV" has emerged in recent months to describe this phenomenon, and at times it can be a little overwhelming trying to remain culturally relevant and keep up with so many different shows that people are constantly talking about online and elsewhere. At a certain point, you have to draw a line to retain your own sanity, so I'm pretty sure I won't be watching a majority of these shows...at least for a couple of years until I finally get around to finishing all of the shows I already want to complete.

Along with returning shows, some of the new series Netflix will be debuting next year include Judd Apatow and Gillian Jacobs' Love, Baz Luhrmann's The Get Down, Marvel's Luke Cage, and Fuller House. As of right now, though, I'm more interested in the ten new feature films they have in the works. Are you going to try to keep up with all of this new content?

French filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional) is hard at work on the most expensive movie in EuropaCorp history, the $180 million sci-fi epic Valerian. He's secured Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, and Rihanna to star, and now he's added two more veteran actors to the cast: Ethan Hawke and John Goodman.

Ethan Hawke will play in #Valerian! I want to work with for years! We gonna have fun!!!

A photo posted by @lucbesson on Dec 5, 2015 at 7:56pm PST

The Wrap reports that Goodman will provide the voice of a CG alien character, but they don't have any more information than that. (There's no word on Hawke's character at this stage, either.) This won't be the first time Goodman has voiced a CG alien, though: he lent his pipes to the character of Hound in the abysmal Transformers: Age of Extinction.

This film, which has been a passion project for Besson that he's been wanting to make for years, is based on the 1967 French comic by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. The story centers on Valerian (DeHaan) and Laureline (Delevingne), agents who protect people from rogue time travelers.

Valerian and Laureline are exploring Syrte, capital planet of a system of 1,000 worlds. Their mission is to discover whether the Syrtians could present a danger to Earth. What they find is a decaying empire led by decadent aristocrats, a population ripe for revolution, and a mysterious caste of masked wise men who discreetly pull the strings from hidden fortresses. Swept up by the winds of history, the agents of Earth will have to choose a side.

Production officially begins next month, and Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets will arrive in theaters on July 21st, 2017.

Via: /Film

I've got an awesome short film for you to watch today that's one of my favorites of the year. It's called Bad Guy #2 and it follows a young man's rise to power in the mob. This is a hysterical film that's gory as hell! The main character is great, and I really enjoyed how the story played out with the comedic aspects, but one of the many things that make this short special is the fact that all of the over-the-top blood and gore effects were done practically. 

The film was directed by Chris McInroy and the first time I saw it was while I was covering the FilmQuest Film Festival earlier this year. Here's the brief synopsis:

In this practical effects driven splatter comedy, one bad guy discovers that sometimes promotions suck.

Now watch the short and enjoy the bloody madness! 

For the past year or so, people at Lionsgate have been hinting (threatening?) that they have plans to make prequels to The Hunger Games movies. The last installment, Mockingjay — Part 2, didn't perform nearly as well as the company would have hoped — perhaps because Part 1 was dreadfully boring and splitting it into two parts was a blatant cash grab? Are audiences finally getting sick of this trend? I hope so! — but it still made enough that the executives aren't going to leave the franchise alone.

THR reports that Lionsgate entertainment vice chairman Michael Burns told a crowd at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference that the Hunger Games franchise will "live on and on and on."

"The one thing that kids say they missed (from the early Hunger Games films) was there was no arenas," he said, referencing the stadiums where children killed each other and noting the prior films only covered the 74th and 75th competitions. "If we went backwards there obviously would be arenas."

So it's a safe bet that we won't be seeing Jennifer Lawrence and Katniss Everdeen any more, but if they cast a hot young actor to play President Snow, return to the killing-centric arenas, and drop the political subtext (read: everything that makes the current movies even vaguely interesting), I can see how they could still manage to turn a profit. Will the prequels be as good? That's up for debate, and, of course, largely depends on how you feel about the current films. But I'm sure we'll have that conversation in a few months when a prequel is officially announced. (Director Francis Lawrence already has an idea for how to do one.)

Not content to exhume the corpse of just one franchise, Lionsgate intends to "get more out of its other big franchises — including Twilight, The Expendables and Saw, nodding towards reboots, prequels or sequels for each of them." So...yeah. Get ready for a lot more iterations and entries into Lionsgate franchises we're already familiar with.

"A superhero so ridiculous, you'll swear Marvel's choosing their projects on a dare."

Screen Junkies has released a new Honest Trailer and this one amusingly takes on Marvel's Ant-Man and has some fun making fun of it. A lot of fans seemed to be pleasantly surprised with how well Ant-Man actually turned out. I loved it, but that doesn't it mean it still can't be the butt of jokes. After all, it is Ant-Man.

The super hero with a name no one can say with a straight face got his own movie, and well, it's about as good as you think it would be. 

If you're a fan of martial arts films and you haven't seen the trailer for Ip Man 3 yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Donnie Yen reprises his role as Ip Man, and he'll fight Mike Tyson — who plays a real estate developer — in the big showdown that marks the film's major selling point. But there's something else notable about this film: it was once slated to have a CGI version of Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist and actor who was trained by the real Ip Man.

But thanks to six new character posters for the new film, it appears that the idea of a CG version of Lee has been nixed. Instead, it looks like Hong Kong actor Danny Chan will portray him, as he did in the TV series The Legend of Bruce Lee. That seems like a much better alternative than a fully CG version, because as good as our visual effects have gotten over the past few years, we're still not to the point where we can create a convincing human being who has to emote. (TRON: Legacy and Terminator Genisys are two recent examples that prove this point.)

Enjoy the six posters below. Ip Man 3 hits U.S. theaters on January 22nd, 2016.

Donnie Yen (upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2) ignites the screen in a return to the role that made him an icon - as Ip Man, the real-life Wing Chun grandmaster who mentored Bruce Lee. In this explosive third installment of the blockbuster martial arts series, when a band of brutal gangsters led by a crooked property developer (Mike Tyson) make a play to take over the city, Master Ip is forced to take a stand. Fists will fly as some of the most incredible fight scenes ever filmed play out on the big screen in this soon-to-be genre classic.

Yesterday, I wrote about how The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus, who plays fan favorite character Daryl Dixon, was bitten by a female fan at New Jersey's Walker Stalker convention. As the fan explained on Instagram:

I lost my mind...got so excited standing beside him...& just turned my head and bit him! I don't know what came over me.

Yeah, no one knows what came over you, lady. You absolutely did lose your mind. Biting someone is not acceptable behavior in civilized society — even if you're obsessed with a zombie TV show.

Anyway, Reedus had the perfect response, which he posted on his own Instagram account:

Um please don't 💃🏿

A photo posted by norman reedus (@bigbaldhead) on Dec 7, 2015 at 6:50am PST

Yep. That pretty much says it all.

We'll next see Reedus in the upcoming film Triple 9 next year, and you can check out this awesome trailer right here if you haven't seen it yet.

Tom Cruise is in talks to star in Alex Kurtzman's reboot of The Mummy, but we knew that he wouldn't spend the whole movie with his movie star face wrapped up in gauze as the title character. In fact, rumors suggested that Universal might be casting a woman to play the mummy this time around, and now THR confirms that Sofia Boutella is in talks for the role. You'll probably remember her as Samuel L. Jackson's knife-legged minion in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and she also has a role in next year's Star Trek Beyond.

Not much is known about the movie's plot, but we do know that the film will be set in modern day and have a mixture of horror and action-adventure elements. It's also meant to be a part of a connected cinematic universe between the classic Universal Monsters like Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man.

I enjoyed Boutella's performance in Kingsman, and she should definitely bring something new to the table in The Mummy. Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange) wrote the screenplay, and Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious movies) is producing. As much as I'm not really a huge fan of the movies Kurtzman has written so far, I did admittedly like his directorial debut, the little-seen People Like Us, so there's a slight chance this could turn out well, despite the fact that he seems a little out of his league directing a film this big. The Mummy hits theaters on March 24th, 2017.

What do you think about Boutella as the title villain?

Rico. Suave. Yep, I remember that song. Oh, hi, let's talk about Just Cause 3, starring Rico Rodriquez and his band of merry misfits. Cheesy intro? Well, you better get used to it because that's what this game is all about. If you... View Full Review on GameTyrant

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Following the final episode of Doctor Who series 9, "Hell Bent," we can now enjoy two new trailers and some really spectacular images to keep our interest and excitement alive for what is yet to come during the coldest months of the season.

BBC One surprised us with some enlightening videos for the show's 2015 Christmas special. Dubbed "The Husbands Of River Song," the episode promises that we'll experience some memorable TV moments as we are going to find out more about the Doctor’s wife, River Song (Alex Kingston).

It’s Christmas Day on a remote human colony and the Doctor is hiding from Christmas Carols and Comedy Antlers. But when a crashed spaceship calls upon the Doctor for help, he finds himself recruited into River Song’s squad and hurled into a fast and frantic chase across the galaxy. King Hydroflax (Greg Davies) is furious, and his giant Robot bodyguard is out-of-control and coming for them all! Will Nardole (Matt Lucas) survive? And when will River Song work out who the Doctor is?

"The Husbands Of River Song" is set to premiere on Christmas Day, just to make our day a bit more special.

Source: BBC America

Just a few days ago, I wrote about actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan's reaction to finding out he'd be playing the role of the sadistic baseball bat-swinging Negan on AMC's wildly successful The Walking Dead. Now the actor is talking a bit more about his upcoming turn as the series' Biggest Bad of them all, and he had some interesting things to say to EW Radio (via Vulture) about whether or not he plans on staying true to the source material, and how he'll handle the character's foul language:

"The character itself is going to be as close as humanly possible...Look, [Negan's cursing] is a speed bump. I’m not going to say it’s an issue because they’re working on it. We’re going to push AMC — the plan is to push them as far as they can because it’s who Negan is. He uses some colorful language. And I use some colorful language. And reading the comic, it’s important. So we’ll see where that lands. It’s our intention that this character is going to leap off the pages of the comic book. It’s very important that that’s who it is. Some of the characters there’s much more leeway, but Negan is a guy that you want to keep as true as possible, and that would be how I want to play him as well."

I'm sure fans of the comic who already know all about the character are thrilled to hear that, and it will definitely be interesting to see just how far the showrunner and producers are going to be able to push the network when it comes to language. Breaking Bad dropped a couple of F bombs here and there during its run, but the audio for those specific words was always cut out — will we see something similar here, or will they alter the language enough that the same intensity and points are made without actually using those exact words? We'll find out.

In the meantime, you don't need to worry about Morgan's swing — he's got that under control. "I don’t need to practice my swing. I grew up with a bat in my hands." Rick and company better keep their heads on a swivel...while they still can.

Looks like somebody forgot to put Baby in a corner, because she's coming back to have the time of her life once again. The Wrap reports that ABC is going to broadcast a three hour remake of Dirty Dancing with Abigail Breslin in the role of Baby, the character originated by Jennifer Grey in the 1987 film.

Jessica Sharzer wrote the script for the remake, Wayne Blair (The Sapphires) will direct. Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the first movie, will executive produce alongside Allison Shearmur, while the music will be from Adam Anders and Peer Astrom. The original movie centered on the young Francis "Baby" Houseman falling in love with her summer camp's sexy dance instructor. A sequel, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, was released in 2004, but apparently was itself a loose remake of the original, just set in a different location.

Breslin memorably danced her way across a stage in 2006's Little Miss Sunshine, but I believe this will be the first time we see her strut her stuff in her adult career. No word yet on who they'll get to play the absurdly-named Johnny Castle, the role originated by the late Patrick Swayze. The original movie was only an hour and forty minutes long, so I really hope the commercials are factored into this one's reported three hour run time — otherwise it's gonna be a loonnnnng dance.

No air date has been released yet, and there's also no word on whether or not Baby's dad will deliver the line "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong" to Castle, without actually ever actually saying he's wrong (click play below). That always bugged me about the original.

Today we get our first look at Margot Robbie as Jane and Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan in Warner Bros. live action film The Legend of Tarzan. Harry Potter director David Yates is helming the movie, and thanks to USA Today, we also have some new details on the story. Here's their breakdown:

Legend takes a different approach to Tarzan than [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’ 1910s writings, the 1930s Johnny Weissmuller movies and other pop-culture adaptations that focused on the man being raised by simians and becoming lord of the jungle. Instead, the movie finds John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, a decade removed from his home in the Congo and fully entrenched as a British gentleman in 1880s Victorian London, with his beloved wife Jane (Margot Robbie) by his side.

He’s left his African home behind — his early days are seen in flashbacks — but is constantly reminded of his earlier exploits and gets invited back as an emissary of Parliament. While hesitant at first, Tarzan eventually returns to the Congo, old friends as well as Jane are put in serious danger, and his latest cliff-jumping, vine-swinging story kicks off from there.

Skarsgård, who is rocking some pretty crazy-looking abs in the image below talks about the film:

“It’s almost the opposite of the classic tale, where it’s about taming the beast. This is about a man who’s holding back and slowly as you peel off the layers, he reverts back to a more animalistic state and lets that side of his personality out.”

Yates also talks about the characters in the movie. He describes Jane as being “in no way a passive partner to Tarzan. She’s a really strong, assertive, beautifully knowledgeable, very sexy modern woman who can more than look after herself.” As far as Tarzan's physique is concerned he explains that "Tarzan needs muscles, but it’s more a leaner, longer, more vertical modern man than the square-jawed stereotype we’re used to.”   

The rest of the cast includes Djimon Hounsou as Chief Mbonga, Samuel L. Jackson as the real-life figure George Washington Williams, and Christoph Waltz as the Belgian antagonist Captain Leon Rom.

The movie is set to be released on July 1st, 2016, and the director adds this last bit of info,  “In a way, it’s a story of two human beings and how they save each other.” Yates is a talented director, and I'm excited to see how The Legend of Tarzan turns out.

It has been awhile since we've seen Ethan Van Sciver's pencils on a Green Lantern book, but with Edge of Oblivion he makes his welcome return. Alongside scribe Tom Taylor (Injustice: Gods Among Us), the six issue miniseries will follow the remnants of the Green Lantern Corp right after the events of Lost Army. No one, and I mean no one, draws a more kick ass version of Guy Gardner than Van Sciver, and I'm so happy to see him on the book. The way he visually interprets the different lantern constructs is just so inventive, and it really allows their powers to leap off the page. You can see some of the covers for the series as well as one of the interior pages down below.

This leads us to a natural question. Who is your favorite Green Lantern artist? Let us know in the comments below.

Benedict Cumberbatch is currently shooting Doctor Strange, but he just landed the lead role in a World War II drama called The War Magician. The project has been in development since 2003, and it looks like it’s finally going to get made. In the film, Cumberbatch will fight the Nazis with illusions and magic. 

The film is based on a fact-based novel by David Fisher, and the script for the film itself is being adapted by Gary Whita, who recently wrote Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This film could be incredible, and with Cumberbatch on board, there’s no doubt we’ll get a great performance. Variety offers the following details on the story:

Cumberbatch will play the titular British hero Jasper Maskelyne, the magician whose illusions helped the allied forces fight against the Nazis during World War II. Maskelyne put together a “dirty dozen” of accomplices known as “The Magic Gang,” who were able to make tanks, troops and buildings seem to disappear, along with conjuring phony armies.

Maskelyne and his associates also managed conceal the Alexandria harbor and the Suez Canal, where there were 150,000 men with 1,000 guns and tanks, turning the tide of the war against General Rommel and the Germans in North Africa.

He created a bogus Alexandria harbor that attracted most of the nightly bombing raids and shielded troops in the Suez through anti-aircraft searchlights and mirrors that blinded Nazi pilots. Maskelyne’s techniques resulted in Adolf Hitler adding him to his personal blacklist alongside men like Douglas MacArthur and British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery.

How freakin' awesome does that sound!? There’s no director currently attached to take on the project, but back in 2012 World War Z director Marc Forster was supposed to take it on. Before that, Paul Wagner was going to direct in 2003. Neither of those guys are involved with the project at this point.

Apparently, Cumberbatch has been in discussions about joining the film since last year. It’s good to see that everything has come together. Now all they need is a talented director to bring this incredible story to life on the big screen.

Producer Bob Cooper had this to say in a statement:

“The Maskelyne character is so different from the one that Benedict portrayed in ‘The Imitation Game’ in that Maskelyne was very outgoing and confident. We think this is a perfect blend of acting talent with material.”

I’m excited to see how this thing turns out! 

"An elegant weapon for a more civilized age..."

I’ve got an awesome new featurette for you to watch for Star Wars: The Force Awakens that centers on a Jedi and Sith’s weapon of choice. The featurette is called “Evolution of the Lightsaber,” and it goes through the history of how the Lightsaber came to play a major role in the Star Wars universe. 

It goes into how Kendo was used as the basis for the type of sword fighting used in Star Wars. The video shows how those duels have evolved over the course of the movies. There’s also footage from the film and behind-the-scenes footage of the actors rehearsing their fight sequences.

ESPN is going to air a special hosted by Mark Hamill that will dive into the origins of the weapon, the different styles, and the technique used when fighting with them. 

The Star Wars: Evolution of the Lightsaber special airs on ESPN December 15th.