I'm really curious to see how the new Power Rangers movie that's being developed at Lionsgate is going to turn out. With a decent sized budget, it has the potential to be something epic. While we wait to find out more information on that film, here are a couple of awesome character designs created by David Rapoza featuring the Red and Pink Rangers.
20th Century Fox has released another TV spot for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and it includes some more unseen footage from the film. There's even a short little clip of the apes attacking a bear! The awesomely intense looking film is set to invade theaters on July 11th.
For better or worse, Hugh Jackman's cinematic Wolverine is the most common Wolverine cosplay. Because of the difficulty of making the mask and costume, and the relative simplicity of jeans and a tank top, there is a major imbalance. To present the widest array of Wolverine cosplay I've been a lot more selective on the cinematic versions, so a lot of good stuff was cut to present more variety.
If you've got good cosplay or think I missed something, send it our way.
Earlier this week we learned that Sinister director Scott Derrickson is set to direct Doctor Strange. Marvel is now seriously on the hunt for an actor to take on the lead role. According to Deadline, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy are on the list of actors they'd like to cast.
Both actors are amazingly talented, and each has their own qualities that they Would bring to the character. Out of these two actors, though, I would love to see Cumberbatch take it on.
No offers have been made yet, but right now I'm rooting for Cumberbatch. The more I think about him as Doctor Strange, the more enthusiastic I get about this movie! I just think he'd be awesome. Previous actors rumored for the role have been Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jared Leto, and Johnny Depp.
Out of these two actors, who would you like to see in the role?
Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn has announced via Twitter what his next project will be, saying:
"The silence has been broken my next film will be I WALK WITH THE DEAD shooting in LA."
I Walk the Dead is going to be a step away from Refn’s comfort zone. Up until this point he has stuck with male driven stories, but Dead will feature a female protagonist.
This is a project that Refn has been developing for a while. Originally, Carey Mulligan was attached to play the lead. As of right now, we are not sure if that is still the case.
Previously, Refn has described the movie as an “all-female horror film” with “lots of sex.” Polly Stenham is attached to write the film and there is no release date as of yet.
I loved the director's work on Drive and Bronson, but I am still not sure what to think of Only God Forgives. I am interested to see what else comes out about this film.
50 Cent was recently a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live where he showed off a funny parody trailer for Disney's Maleficent. It's called Malefiftycent, and he's not afraid of no little white girl. I love these parody trailers that Kimmel produces for his shows. They always deliver the laughs.
Sony Pictures has released an international red-band trailer for 22 Jump Street. From what I've seen this movie has the makings of a great comedy sequel. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum make such a great on-screen team, and I imagine if this sequel does well, the studio will make a third one.
After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don't have to just crack the case - they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.
The film was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and it hits theaters on June 13th.
Hot Toys has offered a little tease of their upcoming line of collectible action figures based on Marvel's amazing looking film Guardians of the Galaxy. I can't wait to see what these look like when they're completed! Here's the note that came along with the photo above:
Marvel Studios’ upcoming summer blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy, will expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos! The space adventure film will follow Starlord Peter Quill and a team of disparate misfits—Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer to save the galaxy!
Following the release of the film’s latest TV Spot, Hot Toys is excited to share with you all a peek of the range of collectibles that we are developing based on this action packed movie!
The latest Homemade Shot for Shot trailer from CineFix is for Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction. The episode was directed by California-based animator and musician Dustin McLean. I've also included a behind-the-scenes making of video, and a side-by-side comparison with the actual trailer.
Some photos from the set of Terminator: Genesis have surfaced, and they give us our first look at Arnold Schwarznegger back in action as the badass cyborg. They also feature Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke as John Connor, and Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese. I'm sorry that I can't post the photos here, but I don't want to get sued. If you want to see the photo though all you need to do is click here for photos of all the characters mentioned above in the middle of shooting a scene. Then click here and here to see close-up shots of the Terminator himself looking a little beat up.
James Cameron recently talked about the film, and how he helped out a little in developing the story. The film is being directed by Alan Taylor and also stars J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi, Byung Hun Lee, and Matt Smith. Paramount Pictures will release the film in theaters on July 1st, 2015.
Here's a delightfully comical piece of fan art by Abraham Lopez that brings together Batman and the alien Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. The look on Stitch's face as he stares up at Batman is great. Here's what the artist has to say about the illustration in a statement:
"Look who wants to join the Bat Ohana… I really wanted Batman's symbol somewhere in here as well as the hibiscus flower to represent Stitch. I played around with some Hawaiian themed Bat logo, but couldn't find a proper place for it that wouldn't seem forced and wasn't too covered up. Finally ended up using both as word bubbles to represent each character and their voice."
Yes Man director Peyton Reed has officially been set to direct Marvel's Ant-Man, and even though Adam McKay turned down the offer to direct, he's still coming on board to help with developing the script.
So we've gone from an amazing director like Edgar Wright to a very mediocre director like Reed, who has made other films such as Bring It On, Down With Love and The Break-Up. My Initial reaction to this news was, "What the hell!? Are you kidding me!?" This is definitely a big step down, and he really has no business directing a movie like Ant-Man. I'm sure fans aren't going to be very happy with the choice.
After thinking about it a little bit though, you've got to understand... No matter who directs the film, Marvel is going to get to make the film THEY want. The studio wanted their vision realized so bad that they sacrificed Wright to get it, which means they know where they want to take the story and character in the Marvel cinematic universe. They now have a director on board that will basically do whatever Marvel tells him to do. He is literally a "Yes Man."
So, if you want to look on the bright side of things take comfort in knowing that Marvel is the brains behind this film, and if you trust them then they'll give you the movie you want to see. If you don't trust Marvel then I don't know what to tell you, hopefully they surprise us all.
Here's a synopsis that the studio released:
Armed with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, con-man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) must embrace his inner-hero and help his mentor, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), protect the secret behind his spectacular Ant-Man suit from a new generation of towering threats. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Pym and Lang must plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.
Source: Marvel
Brett Ratner has acquired the rights to a very interesting book written by Jon Mooallem called American Hippopotamus. He will develop it into a feature film with Edward Norton set to produce. It's not confirmed, but there's a good chance that Ratner could direct Norton in the film. They previously worked together on the Hannibal Lector movie Red Dragon. This is a crazy sounding true story. Here's a description of it from Deadline:
"Responding to a meat shortage in the U.S. in 1910, two bitter enemies joined forces to try and import hippopotamuses to the swamps of Louisiana and convince Americans to eat them. Even though Theodore Roosevelt and The New York Times endorsed the plan, the fact that you don’t find hippo on the menu shows how well their campaign fared. Key to the movie is the rivalry of the hippo duo, both of whom were spies. Frederick Russell Burnham was a frontiersman and freelance adventurer whose exploits were the inspiration for the Boy Scouts, and he teamed with Fritz Duquesne, aka the Black Panther, a virtuoso con man and cynical saboteur who believed only in his own glorification and revenge. Burnham and Duquesne only recently had been under orders to assassinate each other, and they would return to being bitter enemies. But they took a break to try and get American hungry for hippos."
That story seems so ridiculous on so many levels. You can't make this stuff up. It's sure going to make for a fascinating flick!
The art of airbrushing used to be a big thing. One of my first jobs was working for a guy who specialized in airbrush art, and he would do a ton of posters for the movie studios. The picture you see above is a piece of concept art for Steven Spielberg's classic film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was created in 1980 by Michael Lloyd using an airbrushing technique. Lloyd captured that horrifically awesome scene perfectly when he made it.
Thanks to Randar for the heads up!
Pierce Brosnan is back and kicking ass as a spy in a new action thriller called The November Man. He even has former Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) to join him in his mission of revenge. The trailer really doesn't give much of the plot away, but it does have a couple shots of guys slowly walking away from explosions. Here's a brief synopsis:
An ex-CIA operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.
In an interview with USA Today, Brosnan talked about why he took on this film project saying:
“It just felt right, what can I say? Enough time has passed from my days as Bond. I think the stage is big enough and wide enough for me to step back.”
He went on to explain the character he plays:
“All he has are hard knuckles, a hard head and a lot of heart. He has a gun and a knife that he knows how to use effectively. That’s it. It’s kind of stripped down.”
The movie comes out on August 27th, and it will be cool to see Brosnan back in action.
Here's a radical illustration from artist Mark Molnar, who tried to imagine how the Afro Samurai would look like in a live-action film. There was actually a movie announced back in 2011 with Samuel L. Jackson, but at this point it doesn't look like that film is ever going to happen.
The fan art you see here was created by Ashton Gallagher, and was inspired by the Marvel comic book version of X-Men: Days of Future Past. The current film adaptation that is out in theaters was amazing! That's one of those movie that I think it worth watching twice on the big screen.
I'm such a big fan of classic sci-fi films — you can check out the Top 10 list of my favorites that I wrote up here. I've got a beautiful poster design here that I had to share with you inspired by the 1964 H.G. Wells film The First Men In The Moon. It's got that retro feel that I love from these types of movies. It was created by Stan and Vince, and it goes on sale the first week of July at Nautilus-Art Prints. I've also included the trailer for the film below for you to watch.
24” X 36” screen prints with a S/N regular edition of 300 and variant edition of 115.
During the Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles, James Cameron did a Q&A with his fans and discussed his first big hit, The Terminator, and what led to him coming up with the story. He also reveals that the T-1000 was in the first draft of his script, but he had to cut it due to budget constraints. Luckily, he got to make Terminator 2 where he was finally able to introduce the liquid metal killing machine. Here's the story he told thanks to /Film.
"I sat down to write the Terminator, I think it was in Fall of ’82. And I was sleeping on a friend’s couch hoping my car hadn’t been repossessed. So I was trying to write a vehicle to get a directing gig, basically. I was being very mercenary about it. I thought, “Okay. It has to take place in the streets of LA. It’s gotta be something we can shoot down and dirty – location, available lighting – all that sort of thing, and we’ll just inject.” But the my expertise came from visual effects and production design. So I knew there were other filmmakers who could just do the down and dirty production thing, probably better than me even or at least as well. What was my competitive edge? Science fiction.
"So now let’s think about what kind of science fiction story can you tell in the streets of the present day. It’s obviously not going to be a space story that takes place on another planet. So space was out. So then it was time travel. And it got really simple. See what I mean? So it was all this kind of reductive logic.
"But then my imagination went nuts and I wrote a story in which they send this endo-skeletal terminator, which was their warrior, and he gets destroyed by the Kyle Reese character halfway through the story. Then the guys in the future - the machines, the bad guys – send another robot, although its this liquid metal robotic character. And that’s the story that I wrote.
"So the T-1000, wasn’t called that, but it already existed in the original story. Then I realized there’s no way we can make that for, whatever, $4 million, so I cut the whole back half off the story and expanded the front half and that’s Terminator 1. Never dreaming there would ever be a sequel. I was just pairing it down and whittling it down."
Everything seems to work out great for him! Cameron is so successful now that it's hard to think that at one point he was struggling to make ends meet just like many aspiring filmmakers out there. Just goes to show that if you're talented and you press forward you never know what can happen.
Marvel’s production of Ant-Man has had a lot of trouble lately. What was once a very anticipated movie is sliding into obscurity. With the resignation of director Edgar Wright, Marvel was in the unfortunate position of finding a new director.
It was announced over the weekend that Peyton Reed (Yes Man, Bring it On) has been chosen to take over the director’s chair and Adam McKay (Anchorman) has been hired to clean up the script for the film.
I felt it was a giant mistake not giving Wright the flexibility to bring forth the movie that he got us all excited for at Comic-Con. Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way. Recently, Academy Award winning actor Michael Douglas revealed his feelings on Wright's departure on a video on the website Schmoes Know. He said that he was “disappointed” by the fact that Wright was no longer the director of Ant-Man. Douglas is set to play classic Marvel character Hank Pym in Ant-Man, and he had this to say:
"I was, very disappointed. I’m a big fan of his movies [and] it’s a very disappointing situation."
He went on to say:
"[It] happened very late in the game [and] I don’t think anybody’s quite recovered. My heart goes out to Edgar. He’s been involved with the project for a long time, but he’s talented enough that you’ll be hearing a whole lot from him, and I’m sure with a little vengeance.”
You can watch the whole video below. I am with Douglas on this one; it is a very disappointing situation. Unfortunately, I feel that without Wright directing this movie it will fail. Wright had the love of the story and the cast support. He was the true visionary behind this project. The only way I can see this being saved is if Marvel puts its tail between its legs, apologizes, and lets Wright come back and make the film that he had originally planned.
In most cookie cutter movies, the switching of a director can be done at any point. Wright’s movies are far from cookie cutter, and they come from the heart of a fanboy. He knows why we go to the theater because he goes for the same reasons. So, with Wright leaving Ant-Man, I don’t see this project ever fully recovering. I guess we will have to wait and see if Marvel made the right decision in letting Wright go.
Source: Schmoes Know via THR
