James Franco said he is unlikely to return to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes following the exit of the sequel’s director Rupert Wyatt.
“I was going to be a small part of the next one,” he told MTV. “There was a moment when Rupert Wyatt was going to direct the second one. A lot of the human characters that were in the first movie were dead in the sequel that Rupert was going to direct…”
Franco said there was an opening for his character to make a return to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but changes at the Fox studio made it unlikely he’ll reprise his role.
“There was one scene, between Caesar and my character, maybe even just like on a video that was left behind,” said Franco, adding, “but then a lot of things happened, like [former Fox co-chairman] Tom Rothman who was a big part of the first movie, left. Now Rupert’s not a part of it so I don’t know. My guess is I won’t be in it. Nobody’s talked to me since Rupert left.”
Not that James Franco is in need of things to do. At the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, two of his co-directorial efforts, kink, a documentary about fetish website kink.com and Interior. Leather Bar, described as the “lost 40 minutes from ‘Cruising’ as a starting point to a broader exploration of sexual and creative freedom,” will debut. He is also starring in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace at the festival (this will be quite a racy Sundance for Franco apparently). And a quick look at his IMDb page lists about a dozen projects in various stages of completion.
And just to keep things interesting,…
Full Story »Is Wreck-It Ralph a video game flick for kids, or the saga of a destructive 30-year-old loner on an existential journey of rediscovery? We put the bigger questions to John C. Reilly, whose smash-happy villain Wreck-It Ralph goes game-jumping through his arcade world in search of his inner hero — crashing a first-person shooter and a candy-colored racing game in the process — in the Disney animated adventure.
There’s a lot for children to enjoy in Wreck-It Ralph, but adults may find even more to grasp onto in Ralph’s story – he’s basically just turned 30, is having an existential crisis, unsure of his destiny and his job and what he’s supposed to be doing with his life.
It’s no accident that Disney is over the moon with the age range of people that are enjoying the movie already. Yeah – there are some deep things said in the movie, in a very fun, video game world kind of way.
The kids watching it may not understand some of these life crises for a few decades.
They will one day!
Was that something you had in mind as you gave voice to Ralph? Did you see him as a 30-year-old in crisis?
I wasn’t so focused on the time span of it, and I wasn’t thinking of it so much as a mid-life crisis or existential crisis kind of thing. It was much more emotional, and it was immediate, too – “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” “Because you smash things!” I know, but that’s just what I do for a living! Give me a break! To me, the thing I was most conscious of was someone in the beginning of the story who doesn’t know himself, and he can’t accept who he is, because he…
Former NFL linebacker-turned-actor (not to mention past and future President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho) Terry Crews took a slightly different journey to action stardom than folks like Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger; his route carved a path through the comedy world, with turns in films including Friday After Next, White Chicks, and Balls of Fury. Cast as the bicep-flexing, quip-happy Hale Caesar in 2010’s The Expendables — a role he admits Wesley Snipes might have otherwise played if things had worked out differently — Crews more than earned his spot on the team, backed by Stallone’s vote of confidence: “He literally told me, ‘I’m going to make you an action star.’”
Back alongside his brawny brethren in The Expendables 2, Crews took time to share a few revelations about his Expendables experience with Movieline — starting with a surprisingly in-depth analysis of the art of delivering the perfect action movie one-liner.
What is the secret to delivering the perfect one-liner in a movie like The Expendables 2?
It’s funny because Sly, Bruce and Arnold kind of perfected it — and let me tell you a little thing that a lot of people don’t know. In the first Expendables there were a ton of monologues, and I mean monologues. Mon-o-logues. Everywhere! I remember I had a two-page monologue and spent about two months learning this whole thing, so did Randy [Couture], he had his own monologue — and we get on set and Sly’s like, “We can’t say any of this.” [Mimes crumpling paper.] I was like, “Ahhhh, the script is gone!” And you realize in an action movie, the one-liners…
