Love him or hate him, there's no disputing that what we've seen of Jared Leto's portrayal of the Joker in Suicide Squad got your attention. Whether the film is a massive success or a tremendous flop, his new look and antics will be the story that survives the film. I really like this art by Javier Burgos Arroyo as it makes me wonder if we will see an animated version of this Joker at some point? Smart money says if the movie does well we'll see it in the next couple years.
Ridley Scott seems to be going all in on the science fiction genre these days, and the upcoming Alien: Covenant (a sequel to Prometheus) is only the beginning. Casting for that project is ramping up, and following the additions of Danny McBride and Demian Bichir, Deadline reports that four more actors have signed on to join the space-faring action.
The latest cast members include Jussie Smolett (Empire), Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color, Starz's The Girlfriend Experience), Carmen Ejogo (Selma, The Purge: Anarchy), and Callie Hernandez (Machete Kills, La La Land). They'll join Michael Fassbender, reprising his role as the android David, and Katherine Waterston, who is playing a character named Daniels, who we assume is the captain of a ship called Covenant. Here's the synopsis:
Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world -- whose sole inhabitant is the "synthetic" David (Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
Since Scott has revealed that this movie will contain every version of the xenomorph in existence, there's a good chance that none of these people will make it out of this situation alive. (Trivia: Waterston and Ejogo also co-star in the upcoming Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.)
I realize that these new cast members aren't the most exciting additions, but how do you all feel about this movie so far? Looking forward to it, dreading it, completely apathetic about it? Sound off in the comments and let us know.
We've seen an insane amount of Star Wars art and posters created over the years by different artists. The original trilogy has served as inspiration for some amazing art, and it never seems to get old, especially when you see a set of prints as stunning as this.
Artist Matt Ferguson is the creator of this latest set of officially licensed art for the Bottleneck Gallery. The prints come in both a color regular edition and a gold variant.
The posters you see here go on sale at 12pm EST on February 25th. The variants are a limited edition run of 225 while the regulars are a timed edition that will remain on sale until February 28th until 11:59pm EST, and they’ll print as many sets as they sell during that period. All prints are 12" x 24".
They’ll go on sale at Bottleneck Gallery, and they will cost you $100 for the regular and $115 for the variant.
According to EW, Marvel has cast Game of Thrones actor Finn Jones in the lead role in their upcoming Netflix series Iron Fist. Jones plays Ser Loras Tyrell in the HBO fantasy series, and it seems like he's a solid choice to take on the role of the mystical martial arts master superhero.
Iron Fist is a character that I'm very excited about seeing brought to life, especially in this universe that Marvel has developed for Netflix. He's going to fit right in with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and The Punisher. It will be interesting to see how they envision him in this world with these characters.
Returning to New York City after being missing for years, Daniel Rand fights against the criminal element corrupting New York City with his incredible kung-fu mastery and ability to summon the awesome power of the fiery Iron Fist. This is the synopsis that was previously released for the series:
Iron Fist's real name is Daniel Rand, and in the comics he traveled to a lost mystical city called K’un-L’un with his family at the age of 9. After a series of tragic events, Daniel is adopted by city’s ruler and taught an advanced form martial arts as well as the mystical power of the Iron Fist, which basically allows him to channel his chi to the extreme, giving him powers of healing, telepathy, and super fighting abilities. When he's all grown up he returns to New York City and becomes a superhero.
Dexter's Scott Buck is the showrunner on the series, and I'm sure he'll do a great job guiding it in a direction that fans of the character will be happy with. Marvel hasn't really let us down yet.
I'd never heard of Precious Cargo until about five minutes ago, and after watching the trailer, it's easy to see why. Bruce Willis and Saved By The Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar? In a movie together? Where they play master thieves? Make no mistake, this looks terrible — but in a "this is so bad, it might actually be entertaining" kind of way. It's a low-budget, direct-to-DVD quality heist film that has Willis showing up to collect a paycheck and Gosselaar making an attempt to transition from Franklin and Bash territory into action movie mode. Check out the trailer below, and decide for yourselves if this is prime party viewing material — though the answer will largely depend on how tolerant your friends are of bad movies.
After a botched heist, Eddie (Bruce Willis), a murderous crime boss, hunts down the seductive thief Karen (Claire Forlani) who failed him. In order to win back Eddie's trust, Karen recruits her ex-lover and premier thief Jack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) to steal a cargo of rare precious gems. But when the job goes down, allegiances are betrayed and lines are crossed as Jack, Karen, and Eddie face off in a fateful showdown.
Precious Cargo hits theaters and On Demand on April 22.
Oh, the pre-Internet world. The choices were few, the hair was majestic, and the kid on the street who was lucky enough to have an NES was the neighborhood's ultimate badass. When that issue of GamePro or Electronic Gaming Monthly showed up, it was like a little bit of Christmas in your... View Full Post on GameTyrant
The FX series Fargo is one of my favorite shows on TV, and I love the way creator/showrunner Noah Hawley has captured the essence of the Coen Brothers' movie and ported it to the small screen. But even though Joel and Ethan are executive producers on the show, that doesn't mean they're big fans of it. In a new interview with Radio Times (via The Playlist), Joel said:
"We're just not very interested. I mean, we're perfectly happy with it. We have no problem with it. It just feels divorced from our film somehow."
Seemingly a big part of the disconnect comes from the fact that it's a TV show that explores characters over a much longer period of time than a two-hour film.
"Here's the thing," Joel said. "We work short. Our longest movie (2008's Oscar winner No Country for Old Men) is two hours two minutes. It's just not how we think about stories. I mean, after two hours with a character we feel we're pretty much done with them."
Ethan added, "Would it be interesting to do something like that at some point? I don't even know where you'd start frankly."
I'm sure it's a little weird for them to watch the show and see their style aped on the small screen, but it still strikes me as slightly odd that they'd throw a bit of shade at a show that they're executive producing (though that credit is likely just in name only).
In any case, check out this great video that highlights the similarities between the show and the movie — though beware of spoilers if you aren't caught up with both seasons of the show yet. (There's also some NSFW language, in case you're blasting this video at work or something.)
We post VFX breakdown videos here all the time, but I can't remember the last time I saw one where the disparity between what ended up on the screen and what was physically in the original shot was as large as it was for Disney's live-action Cinderella. Check out MPC's new video below, which shows off the impressive work they did for the film:
MPC’s team lead by VFX Supervisor Patrick Ledda worked closely with Director Kenneth Branagh and Production VFX Supervisor Charley Henley, delivering more than 500 shots for the movie. Work ranged from creating creatures including a family of mice, lizards, geese and butterflies to human digi doubles, complex magical transformations and extensive environment work.
Disney is finally moving forward with their 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea inspired movie, Captain Nemo. The studio has hired James Mangold to helm the film. He is the director of The Wolverine and the upcoming third and final Wolverine movie starring Hugh Jackman.
Disney has been trying to get this project made for years, and at one point David Fincher was famously attached. That would have been a version of the film I would have loved to see. But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
The latest draft of the script was written by Sebastian Gutierrez (Hotel Noir and The Eye), and I'm sure Mangold will do a fine job bring this story to life on the big screen again, but probably not as fine a job as Fincher would have done.
This isn't the only film based on the classic Jules Verne novel that is being developed. Bryan Singer is currently developing his vision of the story, which is apparently a dream project for him. Disney's project will be a little different, though, as it has been described as being a origin story for Captain Nemo, hence the title of the film.
I'm a big fan of Disney's classic 1954 adaptation, and I'm curious to see how these new projects in development turn out. Which of these two versions are you most excited for?
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend a screening of Eddie the Eagle that featured a Q&A with director Dexter Fletcher and star Taron Egerton. (Hugh Jackman was supposed to be there too, but he ended up bailing at the last minute.) I liked the movie — you can read my review right here — and Fletcher and Egerton were both engaging, personable, self-deprecating, and fun to listen to as they spoke about the film. I've transcribed the best parts of the conversation below.
Fletcher, who was hand-picked by producer Matthew Vaughn to direct the film, talked about how he came on board the project:
Fletcher: The script has been floating around for fifteen years before we got ahold of it. So it has been around, it’s just taken its time to work its way through the machine and find the right team and the right group of people to tackle it in the way that we did and give it the heart we felt it deserved. Matthew sat and watched Cool Runnings with his kids. Cool Runnings is another great movie set during the same Olympics where there was a Jamaican bobsled team who came in last…it’s a very good film and a great story about endeavor and sport and achievement, and I think he felt the time was right to revisit it, but this time tell one man’s story or a story about friendship, so here we are.
Egerton on how he physically transformed to closely resemble Eddie:
Egerton: All it was was that I didn’t do any weight loss. (laughs) I looked at lots of footage of Eddie and Dexter said very early on that he wanted me to look like an unlikely athlete, an unlikely hero, and said, ‘Don’t spend any time at the gym.’ I immediately a fist-bump punch to the air, and thought, ‘Great!’ I watched a lot of footage of him. I wanted to affect an underbite. A lot of it was down to the glasses — this isn’t Christian Bale in The Machinist.
Fletcher: It’s as good in its own way, though, what you do. It’s easy to say, ‘I put on some glasses and I affected an underbite,’ but I think that what you get when you watch the film is how much heart and determination Taron brings to portraying Eddie. That’s the journey we go on. I think we admire that relentlessness that he does with such warmth and affection. We were always very clear that we wanted to treat Eddie with warmth and affection because we really admire him.
Egerton: That was something Dexter and I connected with very early on. There’s a great risk with this script that you could take the easy route and deride Eddie and mock him and make him a figure of fun, and we don’t shy away from the fact that he was an unlikely hero and there are a few moments where he looks a bit silly, but I feel — and I hope the audience feels — that the heart of it is that he was someone who was incredibly passionate and that’s what we set about trying to do.
Fletcher: It was a fine line to walk [not making Eddie too nerdy] and sometimes he would dial it up and I’d have him bring it down, but watching it as many times as I have, I can always see that the real challenge for Taron was to make him complex and not make him just two-dimensional. It’s very multilayered. Sometimes it’s quite subtle, but it is all in there. I’ve watched it many, many times and I can see many, many things going on. But that’s what sustains us as an audience through it, that there’s always another element of Eddie through each of these moments that he goes through that we discover about him. It’s not always so straightforward…he has many, many sides, and I think that’s a testament to this young man’s talent.
After hyping the crowd a little about the upcoming Kingsman sequel, Egerton spoke about going from that movie right into this one and playing such wildly different characters:
Egerton: It’s an absolute dream because you don’t spend two hours in the gym and eat chicken and spinach. Matthew first called me about this when it began to build momentum and said, ‘I know you really want to do something different. I think this might be the thing.’ It really was. As an actor, the dream is that you get to play different parts, so yeah, the variety of it is always great.
On the ‘80s-inspired score:
Fletcher: It’s set in a very particular period. It’s a costume drama, for all intents and purposes. All of the clothes are from the ‘80s. We had to go dig out these musty old costumes and that carried through really with the whole concept of the film. The music should be recreated in a very ‘80s way, all of the fonts that you see are very ‘80s and it helps evoke and recreate that era for those of us who remember it. Music is a big part of that, it can take people back to a certain time and place. And during the ‘80s, of course, there was this great revolution in synthesized music. The synthesizer came on the scene, and Gary Newman turned up, and all of these bands that suddenly had no real live instruments. We discussed with the composer creating a score that used only those synthesizers and it captured the era very well.
The production filmed in Germany where the real-life Eddie actually trained, but the studio (understandably) wouldn't let the actors do much skiing because of the risk of injury:
Egerton: I had never skied before in my life. When we went out to Germany, I came out a couple of weeks early and tried to learn to ski and fell over an awful lot. I ended up on a red slope, which was a source of pride for me. We started shooting, and this e-mail came through from production and they said, ‘No one is allowed to ski. At all.’ They feared we would injure ourselves…Hugh’s a sickeningly good skier. How irritating is it how good Hugh Jackman is at everything? (laughs)
Eddie the Eagle is still in theaters, and you should check it out if you're a sports movie buff.
Jonathan Frakes, the man who played William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is set to play Star-Lord's dad in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Animated Series. I don't think they could have gotten anyone better. He's a great choice! The character's name is J'Son, and he also happens to be the king of the Spartax galactic empire. Frakes tells USA Today:
"I'm thrilled to be part of another great sci-fi franchise. And I'm also lucky that the character of J'Son just happens to sound like me."
This is not Frakes' first time providing the voice of an animated character. One of his most well-known characters — and a personal favorite of mine — was Xanatos from Disney's Gargoyles.
His first episode centers around Star-Lord, who goes MIA in Spartax, and The Guardians' efforts to recover their leader. Frakes' first episode will air on March 13th.
It's been a few years since we've seen a truly impressive heist film, but John Hillcoat's Triple 9 is here to remind us what one looks like.
This movie starts out so well that the bank robbery that plays over its opening credits ranks among the best I've ever seen committed to film. Ex-special forces soldier Michael (Chiwetel Ejiofor) leads a five man team — his former spec ops buddy Russell (Norman Reedus), Russell's younger brother Gabe (Aaron Paul), and two dirty cops, Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Jorge (Clifton Collins Jr.) — as they bypass the cash in the vault and retrieve a safety deposit box for the Russian mob. It's a close call but they get away, and that was supposed to be all there was to it...until mafia leader Irina (Kate Winslet) refuses to pay them for their services, blackmailing them into another job that sounds nearly impossible to achieve. In order to pull it off, they'll need to orchestrate a 999 (the police code for "officer down") so the cops are distracted on one side of Atlanta while the gang breaks in to a heavily guarded Homeland Security building on the other.
Meanwhile, a detective (Woody Harrelson) investigates the initial robbery as his idealistic cop nephew Chris (Casey Affleck) gets partnered with Marcus and becomes the target for the 999. As the film races toward its finale, the influence of Scorsese's The Departed becomes more explicit: a lot of people start getting shot in the head, and we're left wondering which, if any, of these characters will live until the end credits.
Hillcoat rarely relies on sweeping wide shots, instead opting to keep everyone relatively close to the camera and creating a sense of claustrophobia that gives us the feeling of being right alongside his characters. The film's centerpiece action scene is a daring police raid that turns into a shootout, but before the bullets start flying, we're dropped in with Affleck's character behind a ballistic shield as he and his team move with precision throughout an apartment building. It's a heart-pounding sequence, made even more intense when it spills outside and transitions into a full-blown firefight with deadly consequences.
The film posits a bleak but realistic world, and builds it out with small but convincing details. In the opening robbery, the thieves show a scared bank manager pictures of his family they found online in order to convince him to help them open the safety deposit box. When three decapitated heads are found in gang territory, two police officers stand in front of the scene and hold up a white sheet to shield it from peeking bystanders. It's little touches like these that make the story feel real and not just like a collection of action movie scenes. Thematically, the movie covers familiar ground — it's about retaining idealism vs. having to "out-monster the monster," as Harrelson's character says — but the execution is so strong, it makes up for its narrative conventionality.
With a cast this stacked, it's no surprise that the performances are solid across the board. Worth mentioning: Winslet resurrects her Steve Jobs accent as the ruthless mafia leader and chews the scenery with deadpan lines like, "I do not like the sea. There's something idiotic about it," while Paul slips back into junkie Jesse Pinkman mode as the troubled Gabe.
Triple 9 kicks down the door of the heist movie pantheon and announces its presence like a shotgun blast. I don't see it becoming a breakout hit (it doesn't have the stylized slickness or the pure star power of The Departed and I doubt it'll be nominated for anything, much less Best Picture), but this riveting cops and robbers classic will easily become an action movie staple.
If FX didn't already grab your attention with the fact they're teaming up Ridley Scott and Tom Hardy for a television series, this trailer certainly will get it. From the looks of it, Taboo is in the running to be one of the great series of the year! Here's a synopsis...
Set in 1814, Taboo follows James Keziah Delaney, a man who has been to the ends of the earth and comes back irrevocably changed. Believed to be long dead, he returns home to London from Africa to inherit what is left of his father's shipping empire and rebuild a life for himself. But his father's legacy is a poisoned chalice, and with enemies lurking in every dark corner, James must navigate increasingly complex territories to avoid his own death sentence. Encircled by conspiracy, murder, and betrayal, a dark family mystery unfolds in a combustible tale of love and treachery.
Sounds about as crazy as the trailer teases! Hardy never disappoints when he plays an unchained man with nothing to lose. Can't wait for this premiere!
I've been seeing more and more adult oriented coloring books these days. I guess adults really like to color! The latest adult coloring book to enter the market will be the "Spawn Adult Coloring Book" from creator Todd McFarlane and Image Comics.
Image Comics released a preview of several pages from the book, which you can print out to practice your coloring skills. Or you can just save it and color it digitally on your phone or computer if that's your bag). The coloring book features art by McFarlane along with some interior and cover art from Spawn's comic history.
The coloring book will be released in comic book stores first on Wednesday, April 13th, 2016. Then on April 19th you'll be able to buy it in regular book stores. At $12.99, this is the most expensive coloring book I've seen!
Now you can make Spawn any color you want!
About a month ago we learned that Guillermo del Toro might direct a big screen adaption of the classic kids horror book series by Alvin Schwartz, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Variety recently confirmed that he is looking at directing the film, which he is currently developing, and that CBS Films has hired writers Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman to polish the script. They previously worked on The LEGO Movie.
It would make sense for Del Toro to take on this project, and I imagine this will be the next film he works on. Earlier this week we learned that he had passed the directing duties for Pacific Rim 2 on to Daredevil showrunner Steven DeKnight, which tells me that he’s got something cooking that he would much rather do, and I think that project is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. At least, I hope it is!
The first draft of the script was written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, and later in development John August worked on a draft.
I would absolutely love to see Del Toro take on this project because he would be perfect for it. I grew up on these books, and my brothers and I used to stay up late at night reading them and listening to the audiotapes scaring the living shit out of each other.
The creepiest part of the books were the illustrations created by Stephen Gammell. Those images are forever etched into my memory, and from time to time they still influence my nightmares. Apparently, the film’s plot will have something to do with these illustrations.
There was a recent 30th-anniversary edition of the books that was released in which Gammell’s illustrations were replaced with new art by Brett Helquist. I wasn’t a big fan of the change, and neither were many of the fans. Last year it was revealed the movie would actually address the change. August said:
“Without sort of spoiling things about the movie. I will say that the difference between those original illustrations and the second set of illustrations are an important aspect of the movie experience.”
I’m curious to see how that actually fits in with the story they are going to tell. I just really hope this thing isn’t like the Goosebumps movie that was recently released. Here’s a description of the book:
This spooky addition to Alvin Schwartz’s popular books on American folklore is filled with tales of eerie horror and dark revenge that will make you jump with fright. There is a story here for everyone — skeletons with torn and tangled flesh who roam the earth; a ghost who takes revenge on her murderer; and a haunted house where every night a bloody head falls down the chimney. Stephen Gammell’s splendidly creepy drawings perfectly capture the mood of more than two dozen scary stories — and even scary songs — all just right for reading alone or for telling aloud in the dark. If You Dare!
If done right, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark could be an insanely terrifying film. Hopefully that’s what Del Toro and these screenwriters will give us.
It's official. If this game gets funded Kevin Smith will have invaded all possible forms of media. Who wouldn't want to play a Jay and Silent Bob video game though?! I know 13 year old me would've been all about it, and adult me is not disagreeing!... View Full Post on GameTyrant
The Mist is another favorite story of mine from the master of horror, Stephen King. Not only did I like the book, but I also thought the Frank Darabont-directed movie was fantastic, regardless of the controversial ending.
That story is now going to be adapted into a TV drama/horror series from Dimension Television. Spike has ordered a pilot episode that could eventually turn into a full series.
The series will tell the "harrowing story about a seemingly innocuous mist that seeps into a small town and creates immense havoc." There's so much that can be done with this story, and I'm curious to see how they plan on adapting it for the small screen.
The series is being developed by executive producer Christian Torpe, who created a show in Denmark called Rita. He's also helped develop programming for Showtime and AMC. I've never seen Rita, but Sharon Levy, Executive Vice President over Original Series at Spike says:
“We are thrilled to join forces with the incredibly creative Christian Torpe and Dimension Films to develop Stephen King’s enthralling novella to a compelling series unlike anything else on television."
Bob Weinstein, Co-Chariman of The Weinstein Company added:
“We are excited to be in business with Spike on their first scripted production pilot and working with the very talented Christian Torpe to further explore Stephen King’s classic novella and bring this riveting series to television audiences.
I always hope for the best for series like this because I'm such a huge fan of the horror genre and of King. I've loved what Hulu has done with 11.22.63 so far. That raised the bar and set the standard for these kinds of series, and I hope The Mist is able to hit that high-quality standard.
Source: Variety
Earlier this week we showed you Atlas the robot being smacked around with a hockey stick while trying to work. A lot of you guys were not okay with it! If you thought that made you feel bad, wait until you see what it looks like when it's in an ASPCA like commercial!
I wanted to laugh, but man, some of those cuts looked brutal! I shouldn't feel so much of an emotional attachment to machines! Damn you for making me feel, Greg Killian!
I’ve got a trailer here for an awesome looking animated steampunk sci-fi film called April and the Extraordinary World. The movie is a French film created by GKIDS, and it takes place in a world in which Napoleon Bonaparte was killed before he became a famous world leader.
The trailer premiered on io9, and they explain that Napoleon’s “demise started a chain reaction where most of the scientific advancements we now know and use never happened. Electricity, television, telephones? Don’t exist. Instead, everything is run on fossil fuels, which obviously has led to a very different world.”
It a fun concept, and it looks like it was wonderfully executed in this film. io9 says, "It’s not live-action, it’s not American, but it’s got more life and wonder in it than 90 percent of the films released in the States combined." Here’s the synopsis:
Paris, 1941. A family of scientists is on the brink of discovering a powerful longevity serum when all of a sudden a mysterious force abducts them, leaving their young daughter April behind. Ten years later, April (Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard) lives alone with her cat, Darwin, and carries on her family’s research in secret. But she soon finds herself at the center of a shadowy and far- reaching conspiracy, and on the run from government agents, bicycle-powered dirigibles and cyborg rat spies.
The main character, April, is voiced by Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises), and it’s set to be released on March 25th, 2016. Check out the trailer below and tell us what you think!
Because you can't get enough Deadpool, here's some great artwork for your Friday! I'm almost certain I've seen DP brawl in a bathroom on more than one occasion, but never with this many people! Was this part of a henchmen-coordinated bathroom break? That aside, great stuff from artist Patrick Brown.
