Damon Lindelof may be leaving Ridley Scott’s Alien universe on a vague, quasi-philosophical note that leaves no one feeling fully satisfied, indicating this week that he won’t be penning the sequel to Prometheus. Speaking to Collider, Lindelof talked first about the possible direction the Prometheus franchise-within-a-franchise could take, and then explained why he won’t be returning for round two.
While he doesn’t quite come out and say it plain, he does admit circumspectly that the popular response to his script may have had a small influence on his decision. “I think what ended up happening,” Lindelof said, “was that the movie came out, and there was a reaction to the movie.”
There’s far more to it than that, of course. Lindelof is, despite the haters, very busy. “…I got really wrapped up in [Star Trek Into Darkness] and really wrapped up in this movie that I’m producing and writing with Brad Bird,” he said, referring to the Disney film currently code-named 1952. Lindelof also cited an upcoming TV project he’s passionate about, all of which led him to conclude he wouldn’t be able to make the kind of commitment a project like Prometheus 2 would require.
Fortunately, according to his telling of events, Scott was fine with it. “I said to him, ‘I really don’t think I could start working on this movie until I do this other stuff. And I don’t know when the other stuff is going to be done.’ And he was like, ‘Well, okay, it’s not like I asked you anyways.’”
But do we even need a sequel? To my mind, a continuation of Prometheus would just be an exercise in throwing good money after horrendously convoluted money. But what about you, readers? Do you want to see a return to the…
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Seth MacFarlane may direct and star in the “contemporary” Western. Also in the news Tuesday, Disney is blasting Stan Lee Media’s multi-billion lawsuit over rights to Marvel characters; Guillermo del Toro eyes his next project; the Film Society of Lincoln Center will host Tom Cruise retrospective; and Lincoln may leave some in Alaska out in the cold.
Seth MacFarlane Eyes Western Comedy as Ted Follow-Up
MacFarlane and his Ted co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild are writing A Million Ways to Die in the West, which MacFarlane is said to star in and direct for Summer 2013. The story is described as a Blazing Saddles-stye pic, which translates into a Western with contemporary humor. The script is said to contain MacFarlane’s racy humor, but also has a romantic female lead, THR reports.
Disney Blasts Stan Lee Copyright Lawsuit Regarding Marvel Superheroes
Disney called Stan Lee Media’s multi-billion lawsuit “flawed beyond cure” and filed a motion for its dismissal last week. Stan Lee Media claims rights to all Marvel characters created by Stan Lee, Deadline reports.
Film Society of Lincoln Center to Host Tom Cruise
Cruise will take part in an onstage conversation with NY Film Festival programmer Kent Jones. The event will include a sneak preview of Cruise’s latest, Jack Reacher in which he portrays a “tough ex-military investigator out for justice.” The event will kick-off the career retrospective, “All The Right Moves: The Films of Tom Cruise” December 18 – 20. Tickets will go for $50 and $35.
Guillermo del Toro Eyes Crimson Peak
Del Toro will direct the haunted house thriller as his next project. Legendary and del Toro are looking to a February 2014 start for the pic, which aims to “channel…
Now it’s Courtney Love’s turn to tell her story about her husband Kurt Cobain and she’s turning to a medium she knows well, even if it has at times not been to her liking. The Hole musician has approached filmmaker Brett Morgan to do a Cobain documentary, a project that has been under discussion since 2007.
“Courtney is the one that brought me into this,” said Morgan, whose Rolling Stones doc Crossfire Hurricane premiered at the BFI London Film Festival last month. “We’ve been trying to find the right time to put tho film together and the time is now.” Morgan, who spoke to the New York Post said they’re eyeing a 2014 release.
Rumors swirled that a Broadway musical based on the Nirvana catalogue recently when once close Britney Spears protégé Sam Lufti testified under oath that he and Love were working on a possible stage or motion picture project based on the grunge artist who died of a self-inflicted gunshot in 1994. “There will be no musical,” Love later told The Observer. “Sometimes it’s best just to leave things alone.”
Nevertheless, a doc is underway at least for now, and it will take the form of a “third-person autobiography,” Morgan said. “[As] if Kurt was around and making a film about his life…Kurt was not only an amazing songwriter and musician, he was an incredible artist and film-maker.”
Kurt Cobain left behind a wealth of recordings even beyond his music, some of which played out in a 2006 documentary, Kurt Cobain About a Son by AJ Schnack, which Love did not sanction. Cobain and Love were both the subjects in the 1998 doc Kurt & Courtney by Nick Broomfield, which Love allegedly tried to…
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The Beatles will be getting a big screen spotlight all their own with a ‘little help from their friends.’ A new project, The Beatles Live! is in the early stages, which will unearth rare treasures from the days of the fab four.
Production company One Voice, One World (OVOW) has been given the go-ahead with the project from The Beatles’ Apple Corps to begin work on The Beatles Live!, The Wrap reports. The aim is a global search for hidden films, sound recordings, stories, photographs and other media artifacts that capture Paul, John, Ringo and George during the seminal band’s concert tours.
“The best media and stories that we find will be showcased in a planned feature film about The Beatles’ concert tours. This project provides a one-time opportunity for the fans to collaborate with The Beatles in a planned feature film,” notes the OVOW website.
The project solicits fans’ material to be uploaded directly to their website in addition to submitting non-digital media and their stories at the center of Beatlemania.
The ultimate goal: to combine footage, images, music, interviews, and stories in a definitive, emotional and visceral feature film about Beatlemania,” OVOW noted. “This cultural phenomenon not only brought the world together through song, but helped usher in what is now recognized as a golden age of contemporary music.”
The Rolling Stones currently has a documentary marking their 50 years together. Brett Morgan’s Crossfire Hurricane screened as a gala at the BFI London Film Festival last month.
In related Beatles’ news, Sotheby’s auctioned off the original artworks from the group’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album for $87,720, Huffington Post reported.
[Sources: Huffington Post, The Wrap]
Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock will take on a boy band for his next project and rabid fans will get a 3-D view. U.K. group One Direction will be the subject of a film by the Oscar-nominated director in a project that will be produced by X-Factor producer Simon Cowell.
One Direction – Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson – have had a meteoric rise since they were plucked into notoriety by Cowell’s original British version of X-Factor in 2010. The five-some quickly became one of the competition’s all-time popular acts. They finished in the final three, but more importantly, they amassed a massive fan base.
In March 2012, One Direction’s debut album, Up All Night, made a splash Stateside, becoming the first British group to have a debut album enter the U.S. Billboard 200 chart at number 1 – god who knew? The band has sold over 13 million records worldwide and today, the group released their sophomore album, Take Me Home, which includes hit single, Live While We’re Young.
The TriStar Pictures project is set for an August 30, 2013 release, which lands on Labor Day weekend in the U.S. and Canada.
Morgan Spurlock, Ben Winston, Simon Cowell, and Adam Milano will produce the film.
[Source: Deadline]
Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh may publicly disparage Hollywood to his legions of Ditto-heads, but that is not keeping the movie biz away from cashing in on the widely followed conservative. And John Cusack is just the man to do it.
John Cusack will take on the role of the ever-controversial Limbaugh in a new biopic that is in its early stages, according to The Guardian. Betty Thomas is eyeing the project as director, which takes a look at the radio personality’s meteoric rise over the past three decades.
Cusack may not necessarily share Limbaugh’s conservative orthodoxy, but the story will reportedly give a “non-partisan approach.” Cusack had been a strident critic of George W. Bush’s Administration. He is also expected to be a producer on the project.
Betty Thomas has radio credentials having previously directed Howard Stern pic Private Parts.
Limbaugh recently lashed out at Hollywood, saying The Dark Knight Rises was anti-Romney because its villain was named Bane, which he said was a reference to the Republican candidate’s former involvement with Bain Capital, which President Obama’s campaign accuses of exporting jobs to China.
[Sources: The Guardian, Deadline]
Now that the scariest parts of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D are proving to be the grisly reviews and box-office results, it’ s a good time to look at a handful of choice video games that have much greater potential than the Konami franchise to be blockbuster horror movies. In at least two of the examples I cite below, along with the pros and cons of adapting them, the film industry apparently agrees — or did at one point — that the game titles would translate well to the big screen. Actually making the movies adaptations of the games has not worked so well.
5. BioShock
In 2009, BioShock looked like it was destined to be a movie. Pirates of the Caribbean franchise master Gore Verbinski was slated to direct the visually stunning game in which a plane-crash survivor in 1960 finds himself in the underwater Art Deco-style city of Rapture and its mutated inhabitants to survive. When the project ran into budget issues, Verbinski turned over the director’s reins to 28 Weeks Later filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and agreed to serve as a producer. Last May, however, Fresnadillo told Playlist he was no longer involved and that the project was on hold because Universal Studios and the game’s creator couldn’t agree on a budget or whether the project should have an R rating or a PG-13, which would attract a broader audience. With the much-delayed third game of the franchise, BioShock Infinite due out in February 2013, and set, this time, in a floating sky-city called Columbia, it’s time to revive this project.
Pros: BioShock is beautiful. Simply seeing the steampunk city of Rapture on the big screen would be worth the ticket. With more…
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Also in Thursday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs: Val Kilmer will receive kudos from the Dallas Film Society; Jodie Foster takes on Money for her next directorial project. Also, Tribeca Film Festival names a new Deputy Executive Director; Tom Hanks is taking on Broadway. And, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) launches a major new initiative;
Dallas Film Society to Fete Val Kilmer
Kilmer will be honored by the Dallas Film Society at their annual fall fundraiser, “The Art of Film” on November 16th. He will be presented with the Dallas Star Award November 16th followed by a conversation during the event by film critic Elvis Mitchell.
Nicholas Apps Joins Tribeca Film Festival As Deputy Executive Director
Tribeca named Apps Deputy E.D. effective October 15rh. He will report to Executive Director Beth Janson spearheading individual giving and corporate sponsorship initiatives, and marketing and communications efforts for Tribeca Film Institute, the year-round nonprofit founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff.
IFP to Develop and Operate “Made in New York” Media Center
Independent film advocacy group Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) will develop and operate a new Media Center in New York City. Bringing together traditional media and emerging technologies, IFP aims to make the Media Center “a hub for filmmakers, content creators, and entrepreneurs to work together under one roof.” Located in DUMBO in Brooklyn, it is set to open in spring 2013. More information can be found at their website.
Around the ‘net…
Cinematographer Harris Savides Dies
Harris Savides, the acclaimed cinematographer who worked frequently with Gus Van Sant and David Fincher, has died at 55. Savides died Wednesday night, his representatives at The Skouras Agency confirmed Thursday. Savides was known…
Russell Crowe and Darren Aronofsky are busy with Noah. Will Smith is apparently tackling the Biblical brother rivals Cain in Abel in his directorial debut. Paul Verhoeven is taking on the big man himself in Jesus of Nazareth and now his earthly mother will be getting a big screen focus. Mary Mother of Christ will show Jesus’ life up until about adolescence and the recently retired Peter O’ Toole is apparently coming out of retirement to join the project, which is being billed as a prequel to The Passion of the Christ.
The project is still casting, based on a script by Benedict Fitzgerald, who co-wrote Mel Gibson’s bloody crucifixion pic and Barbara Nicolosi. 15 year-old Odeya Rush (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) will play the role of Mary.
Peter O’ Toole is apparently heading out of retirement to play Simeon, who blessed the infant Jesus, and Julia Ormond will play the mother of John the Baptist, Elizabeth, according to The Guardian. Ben Kingsley, meanwhile is apparently eyeing to play the era’s evil monarch, King Herod and producers are apparently hoping Judi Dench will take the role of Anna the Prophetess, a widow between 84 and 105 years old. They are also going after Hugh Bonneville to play Satan.
Texas-based televangelist/author Joel Osteen is executive producing the project, and Aussie filmmaker Alister Grierson, who directed James Cameron’s deep sea dive film Sanctum, will direct Mary Mother of Christ. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ made over $611 million worldwide and over $370 million domestically.
James Franco is still channeling all those Renaissance Men from – well, the Renaissance. The actor, director, artist, student, musician, model, writer (have I forgotten anything?) hit the Toronto International Film Festival last month promoting his latest in Spring Breakers by director Harmony Korine, in which he plays a low-brow thug. But now it’s late September and it’s time to roll out with something else. This time, it’s a music video with his newly launched musical project, Daddy, with artist Tim O’Keefe.
Motown superstar Smokey Robinson joins in on vocals in the sultry single, Crime, which debuted today via Spin Magazine. Franco met the singer in a perfect alignment of coincidences that only a man with outsized good karma can have.
He told Spin:
“I had been listening to Motown everyday, talking to Tim O’Keefe about our project. He recommended a documentary about the history of Motown. So I watched the doc in the car on the way to the airport in RI one night, most of the doc was about Smokey. [Then] on the plane to L.A. I slept the whole way and when we landed I woke up with a smiling face standing over me. He said, ‘Hey, I’m a big fan.’ I just stared. ‘It’s Smokey,’ he said. If Smokey Robinson was a fan of mine I wasn’t going to let him get away. Six months later after Tim and I had written the songs I called Smokey from Detroit and asked him to sing on one of the songs and he said sure.”
Franco said that his experience in Spring Breakers, which also stars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, influenced his Daddy project. His co-stars are…
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