With The Smurfs making the jump from the small screen to the big screen earlier this year with staggering box office results, it comes as no surprise that more children’s television favourites are being planned for production. One of them is a 3D movie adaptation of Postman Pat.
James Franco and producer Scott Rudin were hard at work attempting to adapt the seemingly unadaptable Cormac McCarthy western epic Blood Meridian, a project that has defeated great film-makers such as Tommy Lee Jones, Ridley Scott and Todd Fields. Empire confirm that, despite having produced twenty minutes of test footage, the project has hit an unknown roadblock and attentions have now shifted to another Cormac McCarthy adaptation: Child Of God.
If Blood Meridian, a tale of racism and horrifying frontier brutality, was a monster of a tough sell then Child Of God may be Godzilla.
The new Justin Timberlake science fiction thriller In Time could be see a delay after a copyright lawsuit is filed against the production.
The Hollywood Reporter informs us that science fiction titan and habitual litigator Harlan Ellison has filed a lawsuit against New Regency and director Andrew Niccol, among others, for copyright infringement.
Jake (Dan Fredenburgh), a young man of Jewish origin, seems to have everything he could desire from life: he lives in a wealthy suburban house with his fiancee Zoe (Olivia Williams) and has a successful career working for a property development company. But things are not as they seem and after the sudden death of his father he starts to reconsider. The process brings him to his childhood, spent in London's Finsbury Park, where his father owned a tailor shop. Here he begins an affair with a Jewish waitress, Becca (Doraly Rosa).
Contrasts: this is what strikes you when watching this simple yet sophisticated tale of illicit love between bricklayer Jean and his son's new teacher, Mademoiselle Chambon. Contrasts between their respective jobs - his being a manual, repetitive one, and hers being an intellectual one. And, also, and more importantly, contrasts between their respective lives and psychologies.
Production has begun on the new Resident Evil: Retribution movie in Toronto, Canada. It's the fifth film in the franchise and the team will be all too aware of the need to keep things fresh. To maintain the hype, Milla Jovovich (who plays Alice) is giving her twitter followers behind-the-scenes access. She’s already announced that "Chris, Claire and K-mart have been captured by Umbrella” and "We will have the Las Plagas parasite!” so it seems safe to assume that the film will feature a little more from the games upon which they are based.
Details of the long gestating Ghostbusters sequel have been scarce and talk has largely been dominated by the “will he or won’t he” appearance of Bobby Brown* - I mean Bill Murray. Although he's subsequently indicated on Twitter that his comments were “made in jest”, US humorist and actor John Hodgman has added fuel to the fire with comments he made on New York radio station WFMU.
"If you were hypothetically offered a role in 'Ghostbusters 3', would you take the role? Let's say you're sort of the dissolute son of Egon, the Harold Ramis character, and you're kind of like John Candy in 'Splash'. You're kind of a mess. But it turns out that you're a natural ghost whisperer. A natural psychic. But here's the thing: Bill Murray's not going to be in this movie and will probably not be happy that you are. But you get to be in a major role in a major movie and in one of the greatest franchises of all time. Would you do it?"
The first Blu-ray copy of Quatermass and the Pit has been won and, thanks to those fine people at Studio Canal, we have two more to give away.
Quatermass and the Pit begins with the discovery of the remains of early human ancestors more than five million years old during digging for an extension to the London Underground. Shortly after, a mysterious object is also uncovered, and said to be an ancient Martian spacecraft. Professor Quatermass (Keir) works alongside Dr. Mathew Roney (James Donald), Barbara (Barbara Shelley) and Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) to try to find an explanation, deducing that the spacecraft has an intelligence of its own. But once fully uncovered, the spacecraft begins to exert a malign influence, resurrecting alien memories and instincts buried deep within the human psyche.
The Oranges heralds a welcome return to the big screen for Hugh Laurie. In the nine years since Stuart Little 2 - his last major cinema outing - Laurie's become an ever present TV presence on both sides of the Atlantic, and one of the highest paid actors on the planet, so it was inevitable he would be tempted back into the multiplexes. So what attracted him to The Oranges, the first movie project for established TV director and fellow Brit, Julian Farino? A more cynical man than myself might suggest it was the opportunity for a dalliance with Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester, twenty-seven years his junior.
