Obsessed With Film

Tonight, I can jump in my car around 9pm-ish, drive 60 minutes to my nearest Cineworld cinema and see The Wolf Man, a Universal horror remake that I’m desperately hoping isn’t the next Van Helsing. I just don’t need it to suck, there’s too much riding on this movie. I wanna see Universal bring back The Invisible Man etc.

I actually own the below Wolf Man headknocker, and I must have seen the original Lon Chaney Jr. movie a dozen times. As I say, I just don’t need it to suck, these characters mean too much to me. And quite honestly, if Universal have f**ked up what was a hell of an opportunity that was brought to them when a tremendous actor like Benicio Del Toro came to them wanting to play his favourite childhood character on screen, then man – what a cinematic travesty.

The screening is at a 10.30pm, a late night public preview showing. The closer cinemas to me have declined the free public showings and are beginning their Wolf Man roll-outs around mid-day tomorrow, so I could easily see it with fresher, more awake eyes on Wednesday. That’s how to do it right?

Mark Clark was on the job last night at OWF’s press screening invite, and he sent me this brief feedback…

Not a classic update of a classic but wasn’t the total disappointment I was expecting. I was dreading it to some degree, with it’s production history (i.e. the original director Romanek being replaced by the legendary journey man Joe Johnston, Rick Baker’s dissatisfaction with CGI preponderance), but I was holding on to the hope that we would at least get gothic reverence and some actual fear, and not the unintended horror that was Coppola’s Dracula or the nadir of Van Helsing. I’ll let you know if we got what we deserved soon.

Batman On Film guest contributor Mark Hughes wrote on 23.01.10 in a piece titled “Why and How The Joker CAN return in Batman 3″ that nicely compliments my own from two days ago, in regards to the probable re-use of The Joker in next Christopher Nolan directed Batman movie;

“A subplot about this aspect of the Joker as he relates to Batman and Gotham could be an important addition to the storyline… We need not see an entire new storyline about the Joker menacing all of Gotham. The Joker as a supporting character, much like Lecter’s role in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was not the main plot but instead the most important narrative element making up subplots and character arcs”.

In an Oscar winning performance for Best Actor in the Oscar winning movie Silence of the Lambs - British thesp Anthony Hopkins is famously only on screen for 16 minutes of screentime but is the crux of the narrative, helping our protganist Clarice Starling’s murder case because she does not insult his intelligence and arouses a kind of sexual affection for her.

Even though the most memorable scene of the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight took place inside a prison cell between Batman and The Joker – if I were David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan, writing that script for Batman 3 right now, this is exactly how I would accomplish the tricky feat of re-introducing the character in the next movie, but not overshadowing the new theme Nolan will want to explore.

Batman needs to visit The Joker because he has information on the new villain (The Riddler, The Penguin or whatever), or maybe Batman suspects that The Joker is pulling the strings from his prison cell.

The auction for the rights to the Terminator series lasted five hours yesterday between 3pm and 5pm – and neither of the front-runners Sony Pictures or Lionsgate came out victorious.

In the end it was Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacificor, the debtholder who pushed previous owners Halcyon into bankruptcy. The final bid was said to be $29.95 million, and Nikki Finke has reports that the major Hollywood studios backed out when it became obvious Pacificor weren’t letting anyone else get their hands on the property.

As part of the deal, Halcyon will receive $5 million per every new Terminator movie greenlit, and will keep all future revenue earned from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation. The sale also wipes out the debt Halcyon owed to Pacificor and it sure looks like this whole auction was actually a ruse for Pacificor to become the rights holder.

Where this leaves the Terminator series is anyone’s guess but despite Terminator Salvation’s domestic box office troubles, the $380 million worldwide cume for the last movie must be noteworthy for a new movie to be made. Just don’t expect it to be a near $200 million blockbuster next time – think more like $80-$100 million.

Variety report that Fox are in the very early stages of bringing Jack Bauer to cinemas in a European adventure that will act as “a two-hour representation of a day”.

Billy Ray (writer/director of Breach, Shattered Glass) will pen the screenplay for the 24 movie which star/producer Kiefer Sutherland is said to be pushing for as it increasingly feels like the currently airing eighth season will be one of the last for the show, if not the absolute last.

Figures for the show have been dwindling. It’s down 10% on last season – and if Season 8 proves to be the end, I would expect the 24 movie to come quickly and potentially more movies beyond if it proves a hit.

The following Brian De Palma anecdote from Quentin Tarantino, as caught by Jeff Wells at yesterday’s “Directing on Directing” panel at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre is a delightfully honest look at the rivalry filmmakers can share with each other, and how during those peak years of making movies – it’s a great thing to have someone always raising the bar and being that one step above you.

I’ve heard Tarantino mention he has one of these friendly rivalries going with Paul Thomas Anderson, and it’s partly his viewing of There Will Be Blood that really kicked Tarantino up the backside into finishing his script for Inglourious Basterds, and getting that thing done in time for last year’s Cannes Film Festival. This whole situation reminds me of an old saying - competition is the best thing for business.

That’s why it’s a blessing we have the Coens, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, PTA, Chris Nolan, Terrence Malick and the like, pushing boundaries movie after movie, continously raising the bar.

Speaking of Scorsese – Shutter Island opens in 11 days time, my No. 2 must see movie of 2010. I haven’t heard any press screenings/previews yet, and no posters up where I live and I’m getting anxious. Paramount wouldn’t bury this movie, would they?

Three new trailers premiered during the Superbowl 44 last night which weren’t previously leaked onto the web (though a closer inspection says Youtube had one of them for a week). They were new spots for Universal’s The Wolf Man and two of Disney’s 2010 offerings Prince of Persia and Alice in Wonderland.

Amazingly, despite the tough economy, The L.A. Times reports that each new ad cost studio’s $2.5 million+ for a 30-second spot which was paid directly to CBS – ALOT of green these days for one piece of the marketing tentpole puzzle.

Speaking of The Wolf Man, OWF are seeing the movie tonight, and personally I will be catching it either Tuesday or Wednesday….

Trailers for Alice In Wonderland and Prince of Persia, after the jump. Thanks to The Playlist for the heads-up.

So the 11.12.09 story is confirmed (spoiler if you click on that link), and well I don’t know what to think. Bill Murray has told the Mail on Sunday that he wanted it to happen in the first reel but man, I’m kinda hoping it’s a backstory thing and we don’t have to witness it.

I like the character too much, really.

You can find all our coverage on Ghostbusters 3, here.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog say Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been cast in Universal’s prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror The Thing, which shoots mid-March in Toronto.

She plays Kate Lloyd, one of the movie’s leads – a PHD candidate who joins the Norwegian research team in Antarctica after it discovers an alien ship in the ice. Also cast is Joel Edgerton (he was Gawain in King Arthur), who will play the blue collar, money-driven mercenary helicopter pilot Sam Carter, who joins the team when The Thing is released.

Nikki Finke says that David Goyer’s decision to quit as showrunner on ABC’s Flashforward is so he can work on writing the script for Batman 3 with co-scribe Jonathan Nolan. Goyer said in a statement…

“As my feature projects have started ramping up again, I felt I was being pulled in too many directions,”

I think Chris Nolan will want to start his development on Batman 3 post-July time, a little after Comic Con and Inception’s release. And if it’s sooner, then all the better.

Something tells me that the Batman 3 itch has been scratched on sleepless nights by Goyer and Nolan for a while now now and they are probably further down the road than you might think on the script. I would expect them to have the major themes, the villains, the important scenes already mapped out. I mean we’ve all been doing that too in our own heads, right?

So in brief – Goyer and Nolan will probably be writing the script for Batman 3 over the next five/six months. During that time, we should hear of Chris Nolan’s official announcement that he will direct another, and sometime in the summer pre-production will begin. The film will shoot 2011 – for release Summer 2012. I think.