Archive for the 'ScottWeinberg' Category

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

If you’re a Star Wars fan and you haven’t seen Genndy Tartakovsky’s collection of Clone Wars animated shorts, you’re missing out on some pretty slick stuff. (All 25 episodes are available on two DVDs.) Ever since Revenge of the Sith hit the screens, we’ve been hearing from George Lucas that The Clone Wars will soon make the leap into full-length TV adventures. (And by full-length I mean longer than five minutes apiece.) Unfortunately it looks like Mr. Tartakovsky is not involved with the newest Clone Wars series, but here’s some good news: You can check out a promotional trailer for the program right here.

It’s a pretty slick little promo piece, jammed as it is with flashy spaceships, colorful characters, frequent mayhem and a few familiar faces. The IMDb confirms a few familiar voices, too: Frank Oz (Yoda), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) and Matthew Wood (General Grievous) will be reprising their roles — although you can expect a whole bunch of new characters to take center stage. Still no word on which network will get the profitable right to air The Clone Wars this Fall, but I’m guessing it’ll probably be Cartoon Network. Maybe. More likely Fox.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Warner Brothers, Remakes and Sequels

Sometimes you hear about a new remake project and it turns your stomach, and sometimes … a “re-do” doesn’t sound like such an awful idea. Don’t get me wrong: I have a huge affection for Michael Anderson’s 1976 sci-fi cult classic Logan’s Run (I watch it about once a year and it always brings me back to my childhood), but hey, it’s a movie that could absolutely be remade for a new generation — and I’d love to see how producer Joel Silver plans to pull it off. Unfortunately, it looks like X-Men and Superman Returns director Bryan Singer, who was previously announced as the remake director, is now off the project.

According to IESB.net, Singer is out and Silver is looking to replace him with somebody a little more, I dunno malleable? That might explain why Silver’s interested in hiring a first-timer like Joe Kosinski: So the producer knows he won’t have to deal with any delays or power struggles. (That’s just a guess on my part, but I think the same thing whenever a newbie is hired by a big producer to helm an expensive project.) To his credit, Mr. Kosinski has some experience on the video game front: He directed some of the cut-scene footage for Gears of War and the upcoming Halo 3.

Apparently Mr. Silver is not interested in waiting for Singer to start and finish his Superman Returns sequel, hence the buzz on the new hire. Our source also indicates that Jayson Rothwell and Travis Beacham might be among the newcomers hired to turn the original novel and the 31-year-old flick into something flashy, exciting and appealing enough for today’s movie-watchers. Lotsa young blood is now attached to this project, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but I guess we won’t know anything until the movie gets made. (IF it ever gets made.)

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Casting, Quentin Tarantino

Very few actors in the history of the world have been in as many rotten movies as Dennis Hopper — and yet the guy still keeps popping up in studio fare AND good films. Plus his good work definitely outweighs his bad work … mainly because everybody remembers Easy Rider, Hoosiers, Blue Velvet and Speed and nobody remembers Super Mario Bros., Meet the Deedles and Waterworld. (OK, yes we do.)

Bottom line is that Hopper’s a very talented guy who’s still a lot of fun to visit with (even when he’s chomping through scenery like it was made of chocolate). And it looks like we’ll soon be seeing him in a Quentin Tarantino production (I said “production,” not “film”) called Hell Ride (which we first told you about here). The MTV Movies Blog is reporting that Mr. Hopper will join Michael Madsen, Eric Balfour and actor/writer/director Larry Bishop in a chopper flick that’s being described as a modern-day take on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Ahem. That’s some pretty lofty comparisons there, fellas.

Son of old-school comedian Joey Bishop, Larry’s last feature was the barely-released Mad Dog Time (aka Trigger Happy), which had a fantastic ensemble cast but very little else. It looks like Larry and Q.T. hooked up when Bishop played “Larry Gomez” in Kill Bill Vol. 2, but Quentin must have really dug the Hell Ride screenplay if he decided to lend his name/money to the project. Plus, hell, one of Hopper’s all-time best moments came while expelling Tarantino’s dialogue. Yeah, that classic True Romance confrontation between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. Damn I love that scene.

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Filed under: 20th Century Fox, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Games and Game Movies

I’m going to say a phrase and then I want you to close your eyes and imagine what sort of movie that phrase would make. OK, ready? Here we go: “The Sims Movie.” Let it sink in for a bit. Are your eyes closed? Good. Now imagine a live-action 90-minute movie in which all the characters do is lounge around the house, take a few showers, pee a lot, cook food, call people, wash toilets, work out, buy furniture, pee some more, woo neighbors, put out fires, dance strangely, collect mail, pee once more, read a book, and then walk outside yelling Buuu-fwoobadooo-mWAH! to anyone within earshot. Sound like fun? Well then Fox has a movie for you. (Oh, and I know you were cheating. You can’t read movie blogs with your eyes closed!)

According to Variety, 20th Century Fox has acquired the rights to The Sims, and not only are they actually planning to make a movie out of it, but they’ve already hired a producer (John Davis) to oversee and a screenwriter (Brian Lynch) to translate all the floobadoo-fwahs into actual dialog. For those who choose to pay attention to such things (like me), John Davis produced movies like Norbit, Eragon, Fat Albert and Garfield 2. Yeah. Variety claims that Mr. Lynch was a writer on Scary Movie 3, but the IMDb doesn’t seem to agree with the trade paper on that point. (Then again, the Scary Movie flicks have more writers than The New York Times, so I imagine it’s tough to keep track.)

So yeah. A Sims movie. We can’t wait for the expansion packs sequels.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Paramount, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels

Frankly I don’t even know if this is good news or bad news: Nicolas Cage has decided to bail on the Untouchables prequel that Paramount and producer Art Linson are planning to put together. The original plan was for Cage to play a “young” Al Capone, but Variety indicates that “scheduling issues” will now prevent that from happening. (The paper also says that Cage’s next movie is unknown, so I guess we know what “scheduling issues” actually means.) One piece of good news is that Gerard Butler has been cast as the “young” Jimmy Malone — the character played by Sean Connery in Brian De Palma’s 1987 near-masterpiece.

Or perhaps it’s just that Nicolas Cage feels like giving us a break from his face for a few months. Nothing against the Oscar-winning actor (indeed, I’m a big fan of the guy), but he’s already got National Treasure 2 coming in December, and the last few years have been littered with titles like Next and Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man and World Trade Center and Lord of War and The Weather Man. Heck, half of ‘em are damn good movies, but there is such a thing as massive over-exposure. Or hell, maybe Nick’s just trying to be the next Michael Caine.

In related near-news, it looks like Brian De Palma is in talks to direct The Untouchables: Capone Rising, but I’m not sure if he’s signed the deal just yet. It’d be pretty cool if he did. Here’s hoping they can wring a fresh screenplay out of David Mamet. THEN I’d be really excited for this movie. Actually the screenplay seems to come from David Rabe and the team of Koppelman and Levien. Not bad, not bad. But the question of the day, of course, is this: Who would YOU cast as a prequel-style Al Capone? (My vote is for Timothy Olyphant.)

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Disney, Trailer Trash, Remakes and Sequels

The whole treasure-huntin’ gang is back in National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and that means not only director Jon Turteltaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer but stars Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Justin Bartha, Harvey Keitel and Diane Kruger too. (Plus they added Helen Mirren, Ed Harris and Bruce Greenwood to the mix, which certainly won’t hurt.) Also still on board are the husband & wife screenwriting team of “The Wibberleys” (oh how cute, that’s how they’re credited in the trailer). But since “The Wibberleys” filmography consists of titles like The Shaggy Dog, Bad Boys 2 and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, I’ll just focus on the fact that these guys also got a ’story by’ credit.

This time around the plot details with the search of infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth’s missing diary pages, and it’ll bring our secret-crackers from London to D.C. to Mount Rushmore in an effort to decipher some ancient historical silliness. Could be a fun enough flick come December. I was right there with the teaser trailer until Bartha opened his mouth and delivered a joke so lame it reminded me who wrote this movie. NT2 hits theaters on December 21, a week after I Am Legend and a week before Alien vs. Predator 2. (And you thought December was Oscar-bait season!)

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