Lots of news today, can’t help but feel these were some of the scoops for Comic-Con which have been leaked early. Ray Stevenson or as you might better know him, the guy who plays Titus in Rome has been cast as the new Frank Castle in the Punisher sequel. He replaces Thomas Jane who pulled out in May because of fears he had over the direction the franchise was going in.
This delayed the production on the movie for a couple of months as studio execs hurried to find a new Frank Castle so they could still release their movie in 2008. I actually thought for a while that Stevenson’s Rome co-star James Purefoy would have been a great choice to replace Thomas Jane (who they really should have begged to return in all honesty) but they went for Stevenson instead, who I’m not altogether familiar with.
Hooligans director Lexi Alexander, who I believe will become the first female to ever direct a comic-book movie is according to Latino Review helming the flick like we reported last month.
Jigsaw is said to be the villain of the piece which isn’t much of a suprise considering he is the biggest foe of Castle.
Didn’t care much for the first Punisher movie but I thought Thomas Jane did a great job in the leading role. Maybe with a new cast and talent this sequel might be something of an improvement on the first movie but I’m not entirely convinced by the choice of director.
4 Comments
You can tell a lot about a production from casting. Soon as I saw Thomas Jane I knew that if nothing else they got the casting right -okay, all they got right was the lead, but hey, that’s enough for a frnachise. I saw Rome on HBO. Nice concept, but poorly executed, and I’m not sure how I felt about the acting -most of it was mediocre at best. The pace of the series sure moved f*cking slow. Small wonder it got cancelled.
Stevenson made no impression on me as Titus. You could have replaced him with any one of a hundred other guys and I wouldn’t have missed him or cared. And I’ve seen him try to put on an American accent -he can’t do it. Maybe to non-American ears it may not be noticeable, but to American ears he sounds like a bad English actor trying depserately to be something he isn’t.
And I don’t know where this “trendy” idea of casting no-Americans to play Americans came from, but it has got to STOP. I get nauseated every time I see it. There are a TON of actors from the US who could have played Castle (Nick Chindlund, Cole Hauser, and a half-dozen others I could have named off the top of my head).
Unless they’ve got a killer script (which I doubt since they’ve had this many problems pulling the movie together) then I think it’s safe to say this flick is already in trouble.
And the director. I’ve said it before and I’ll say again. Unless the director is a fan of the material (not a fanboy -though it doesn’t hurt, regardless of what the asshole detractors say to the contrary) then they won’t care about the franchise enough to get it right. The director will be too busy trying to force the material into some mold that pleases them, a mold that has nothing to do with the material.
Being a woman doesn’t neccessarily disbar Alexander from directing, but not being a Punisher devotee should.
I love the way you guys just rip LATINO REVIEW’s story and post on your dum site. Give credit where credit is due and stop taking other peoples hard work and making it like you guys broke the story. YOU GUYS NEVER BREAK A STORY.
98% of the time we credit our sources (which is around 2,000 news posts a year FYI and back log them fully James to the original place where the story broke which a lot of other sites don’t do) but obviously sometimes you forget to add a source credit, just from the sheer amount I write by myself every day.
I’m sure Latino Review don’t mind. We link to them all the time and we’ve said nothing but praise about their site from the year we have been in existence. I mean just look at the post below this one…
http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/malin-akerman-cast-in-watchmen.php
Fully credited to Latino Review, who we called “always reliable”.
Infact, you will have a hard time searching through our archives to find another post which hasn’t got it’s original source. Go on, have a go… bet you can’t find one mate.
But I will take your nasty little comment as a mistake.. just like me forgetting to credit Latino Review. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and just say like me you were so busy with your daily writings you forgot to check something before you published it.
Matt, ignore this jackhole. If failing to credit a source once was enough to discredit a pulbisher then the New York Times should have closed up shop a long time ago.
This asshole is obviously from other site where the mouths are big and the webtraffic is low (movieblog anyone?). Ignore this putz.
Oh, and James, it’s “dumb”, not “dum.” I’ll let everyone else fill in the DUMB jokes about you. Though personally I think you said it all.