Posts Tagged ‘Probably’

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers team may soon be counting some new super-powered heroes among their ranks who are clearly more useful than Hawkeye. At the recent Iron Man 3 premiere, Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon heavily suggested as much, telling The Hollywood Reporter that, among new characters, “There may be a brother-sister act from back in the days when I was reading [the comic].” As Donny and Marie have only ever shown affiliation with Superman, thoughts have naturally gone to Scarlet Witch and her brother, Quicksilver.

They’re the daughter and son of Magneto, which you’d think would put them in the possession of Fox and their X-Men universe, but according to Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige, since they were also Avengers members, the rights are split and both studios can use the siblings. Lawyers have already been paid to work out the legal details of a super-fast guy in baby blue spandex and his witch sister, so don’t you worry about that.

Oh, and if you didn’t know, Quicksilver is a super-fast guy in baby blue (originally green, as you can see above) spandex, and Scarlet Witch is a witch and she wears reddish stuff. But Joss Whedon will explain all that to you in 2015.

No stranger to either cloying pseudo-comedy or redoing things already huge in France, Patch Adams and Nutty Professor director Tom Shayac is reportedly coming out of retirement to direct an English-language remake of 2011′s The Intouchables.

Shadyac has been out of the Hollywood film scene since directing both Evan Almighty and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry in 2007. That experience somehow left him unfazed and fine with continuing down that path, but that same year, he did end up concussed by what would be a life-changing bicycle accident. The crash left him with months of headaches and light sensitivity, and he gave away most of his money and possessions–a journey that he chronicled in the 2011 documentary I Am. The Weinstein Company’s remake would bring him back into the narrative fold, just as it’s already brought him back into wanting to have a bunch of money again, as Shadyac’s negotiations are reportedly running long due to his wanting the kind of Liar Liar-sized paycheck he was used to.

The French original Intouchables was directed by Olivier Nakache
Éric Toledano, and starred François Cluzet and Omar Sy as, respectively, a quadriplegic and his reluctant new personal assistant. Forced to spend full days together, rich old whitey and servile black guy get completely Driving Miss Daisy‘d with mawkish, race-and-class-bridging friendship. The audience smiles sweetly.

Though he’s not signed, Colin Firth is reportedly circling the quadriplegic role, but Deadline notes there are still other actors chasing the part. Don’t yet rule out Eddie Murphy pushing around… Eddie Murphy???

We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the long-held dream of seeing Larry David as the Vulture, because the Amazing Spider-Man sequel seems to be going the slightly less on-the-nose route.

Breaking through the color barrier of ridiculous Spider-Man foes, Jamie Foxx has reportedly started talks with Sony to play the flamboyant villain Electro in the studio’s next superhero film. Electro, real name Max Dillon, has long been a part of Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery, and was lightly teased in an Amazing Spider-Man after-the-credits scene that threw in some lighting bolts for the fans. As his name implies, Electro has the ability to manipulate electricity, a power he originally gained in the comics due to a freak lightning strike. That said, he’s since been re-imagined with a less flashy outfit and slightly feasible bioengineering-based origin, so it’s quite possible director Marc Webb will lean toward that route in his portrayal. Until that’s confirmed, try to envision these vibrant curls as electricity:

They put it off all summer, but with season changing, it’s time for Marc Webb and Sony to at last replace the old Kirsten Dunst and James Franco parts they’ve had laying around.

For Dunst’s part of Mary Jane Watson, the studio and Webb are reportedly looking at The Descendants daughter Shailene Woodley (above), whose ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager is about to end, thus allowing her to sign whatever crazy extended contract Sony asks of its superhero people. Of course, this probably means current love interest, Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, will die in the next film or so, but Stone already knew this was coming, and she’s also dating and doing cute, philanthropic shit with Spider-Man himself, so don’t even worry about her. Worry about yourself, because this also means some friends will be like, “Wait, isn’t that the opposite of how it happened in the last Spider-Man trilogy?”, and you’re going to have to be all, “Yeah, but that’s not how it was in the comics,” and you’re going to sound like such a nerdy jerk.

Franco’s Harry Osborne, meanwhile, is also said to be in the midst of a re-casting, but it’s not yet certain who will take the role, because 21 Jump Street‘s Dave Franco is just too obvious. The Franco legacy of being a best-friend-turned-flying-snowboarder ends now, probably.

With production on Ninja Turtles shut down indefinitely , Michael Bay’s vision of “tough, edgy, funny, and completely lovable [turtle-like aliens]” may never reach screens. But if you’re wondering what it would have been like had it reached screens, a recent review of the last draft of the script–the one deemed too terrible for the director of Wrath of the Titans to even bother with–has revealed some insights into what was planned. Unsurprisingly, it sounds quite a bit like what was planned the last time Michael Bay based a movie on an old box of toys in your basement.

You can read the full review here, but in short, Ninja Turtles sounds a lot like Transformers, with all the fantastical toy-based stuff poorly-grounded to military jingoism and a central, ill-conceived teenage love story. Casey Jones is the LaBeouf-y star, a 18-year-old small town security guard and amateur hockey player who’s dating a presumably-supermodelesque, soon-to-be CBS intern named April O’Neal. The villainous Shredder, traditionally depicted in a samurai-like metal outfit, in this incarnation takes the form of an unmasked military colonel (as we learned from his Optimus Prime tweaks, Bay prides himself on breaking off his toys’ little metal mouthguards) named Schrader(!) and thusly, his clan of Foot Soldiers are now proper soldiers–though apparently still identified as “The Foot” for some reason. The turtles themselves, when they encounter Casey Jones and befriend him, still apparently physically resemble “our boys,” but “not in a way you’ve ever seen them,” whatever that means. Probably that at least one of “our boys” would be an offensive ethnic stereotype and/or have visible testicles.

The plot, meanwhile, sends the crew from this small town to New York City, and later to Dimension X, where a character identified as “TURTLE WARRIOR” informs the turtles that they are part of a whole race of turtle warriors, and also that they are also the chosen ones spoken of in The Prophecy (the radioactive ooze story of the Ninja Turtles was not convoluted enough, so now there’s a Prophecy too). Dialogue includes such self-aware, pop culture-acknowledging winks as a nod to Planet Earth, a reference to Reservoir Dogs, Raphael’s incredulous demand to know if he’s “a kid’s toy,” and a spoken-aloud description of the title characters as “Ninja. Mutant. Turtle. Teenagers.” It does not sound like a very good movie!

And thankfully, it remains not a movie at all, with development still said to be on hold until at least a better script is banged out. For now, Earth’s hope for edgy, funny, completely-lovable aliens rests solely on ALF’s shoulders.

(Thanks, KidBraggart.)

From USA Today, here’s a first look at Russell Crowe as he’ll appear in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. See, whenever I’d read through the Book of Genesis, I’d always pictured Noah as more like Russell Crowe from Virtuosity, but I guess this works too.

It hasn’t even been a month since Peter Jackson gleefully announced the end of principal shooting on The Hobbit, but already the director is looking for a way to return to the fantasy realm of Middle Earth. Nerd.

Though The Hobbit‘s production was plagued with issues like director drop-outs, hobbit racism, union demands, and ulcer perforations, sources say an undeterred Jackson wants to devote even more of his life to shooting sweeping, dwarf-filled vistas. He reportedly wants to spend another couple months in New Zealand next summer to extend his two-part Hobbit adaptation into a full trilogy, turning his full Tolkien epic into a six-part series that is going to take all day to watch if you keep insisting on the director’s cuts.

At Comic Con, Jackson already hinted that he’d like to shoot more footage, but it’s said that only now has this talk escalated to the point of really happening, with Warner Bros. beginning the complicated work of re-securing the rights and actors before Orlando Bloom gives up and joins a CBS procedural or something.

While a source told the Hollywood Reporter the decision to make a third film is “about taking the chance to tell more of the incredible tale with the cast we have assembled,” it is thus far unclear what this incredible tale will involve exactly, since drawing The Hobbit out to two parts already meant padding the story considerably to bridge it into The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If the extended Tolkien universe explored in fan fiction is any indication, probably something about Gandalf rubbing his beard on Bilbo’s nude torso.

Continuing the day’s theme of Joseph Gordon-Levitt transit, here’s a new poster for Rian Johnson’s Looper, featuring a look at what is presumably the time-travel capsule used to send Future Gordon-Levitt (Bruce Willis) to the past to die by his own hand (if this sounds confusing, this trailer will sort of explain it). Take a moment to appreciate the remarkable restraint shown in the poster designer not using the capsule as one of the Os in “Looper.” Something tells me this is a different designer than whoever did the Madea’s Witness Protection poster.

Originally conceived as a way to get Departed and Other Guys reunions happening concurrently, to make most efficient use of our dwindling Mark Wahlberg supplies, Three Mississippi (previously Turkey Bowl) was to star Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, and Alec Baldwin in a film about childish middle-aged men competing in an annual tackle football game. Now, the Wahlberg part is being given to Adam Sandler, casting him as rival to his fellow SNL breakout and son to Baldwin, thereby making his relationship with his scoutmaster that much more uncomfortable.

Though most would have accepted “because a Sandler/Ferrell film will obviously make a lot more money” as rationale for the change, Vulture has gone into the details of the decision, which basically had to do with scheduling. Wahlberg has committed to shooting Peter Berg’s Battleship follow-up, the similarly-naval themed Lone Survivor, this fall; at the same time, Ferrell and Three Mississippi‘s would-be director Adam McKay unexpectedly got the green light on shooting Anchorman 2 early next year, leaving this fall as the only time Ferrell is available to shoot, thus forcing Wahlberg out of the film and leading someone to say, “Well, if you can’t get Mark Wahlberg, Adam Sandler is essentially the same guy, right?” The Anchorman thing also forced McKay out of the director’s seat, and now Sandler’s That’s My Boy director, Sean Anders, is taking over.

Sandler has not yet officially signed on to the project, but just go ahead and try and imagine him turning down a role as a suburban father horsing around with fellow SNL alumni. So yeah, Sandler and Ferrell are going to be in a comedy together. How is that only just now happening?

Still no sign of auteur Uwe Boll as DreamWorks and Sony line up directors for their respective video game properties.

Chronicle director Josh Trank, who previously had been loosely attached to rebooting the Fantastic Four franchise, will now be guiding the actions of different giant rock creatures. He’s signed with Sony to direct their adaptation of Shadow of the Colossus, the video game about riding around on a horse and carefully murdering a bunch of oddly-beautiful, massive stony monsters just waiting for you to stab a sword into their moss-covered heads. Trank is sort of an odd choice for the job, considering Shadow is known for its lush, gorgeous vistas and expressive lighting, while Chronicle is famous for being shot really cheaply on camcorders, but the director reportedly sought out the job–and hey, it’s a more interesting choice than indiscernible-CGI-giant maestro Michael Bay, so might as well give Trank a shot. Someone just make sure he watches Where the Wild Things Are before he starts.

Meanwhile, over at DreamWorks, they’re apparently in talks with Scott Waugh to direct their desperate Fast/Furious rip-off adaptation of racing game Need for Speed. Waugh was a co-director on Act of Valor, which already basically looked like a military video game, so assuming he’s able to swap discs in the XBOX of his mind, this shouldn’t be such a big change for him.