Movie Make-out

Yesterday, Variety broke the surprising news that Warner Bros. is shutting down its Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures divisions. The two independently-operated wings will bleed out 70-some positions (between the two studios) over the coming months, retaining enough people to handle their remaining films before closing their doors in the fall.

“With New Line now a key part of Warner Bros., we’re able to handle films across the entire spectrum of genres and budgets without overlapping production, marketing and distribution infrastructures,” Alan Horn, Warner’s president and chief operating officer, told the trade. “After much painstaking analysis, this was a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the reality of a changing marketplace and our need to prudently run our businesses with increased efficiencies.

Warner Independent Pictures had a less than successful track record, with March of the Penguins’ $77 million take and Good Night, and Good Luck’s $31 million as its two biggest hits. Other films it has distributed or produced include David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels, A Scanner Darkly, and Before Sunset.

Picturehouse’s shut-down was surprising, though, because it has brought us the two most successful independently produced films ever made — The Passion of the Christ and My Big Fat Greek Wedding — as well as Y tu mama tambien, Memento, and Pan’s Labyrinth. Last Year’s King of Kong and Rocket Science (a mishandled bomb, to say the least, but I loved it) were released through Picturehouse.

Picturehouse has the Academy Award-nominated Mongol and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl this summer and The Women in the fall. WIP has Alan Ball’s Towelhead in August and Trainspotting and 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire in November.

Related post: Trailer Watch: Alan Ball’s Towelhead; Quick Cuts: Step Up 3D, Pride & Glory and New Line

The Criterion Collection has announced the titles for the influential label’s first BluRay offerings in its newsletter:

The Third Man

Bottle Rocket

Chungking Express

The Man Who Fell to Earth

The Last Emperor

El Norte

The 400 Blows

Gimme Shelter

The Complete Monterey Pop

Contempt

Walkabout

For All Mankind

The Wages of Fear

Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time.

Other than new editions of The Last Emperor and Walkabout, the new offerings only upgrade the existing standard-def editions’ high-definition picture and sound, with “all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions” (emphasis added).

Bottle Rocket over Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums is somewhat surprising, but I’m glad to see The Third Man, Walkabout, and Chungking Express on the list. I’ll be interested in seeing what new supplements they’ll have for Walkabout, which is a favorite of mine.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced the development of a trilogy of feature film adaptations of famous Chinese ghost stories. The first, titled Painted Skin (no relation to the 1992 film of the same name by King Hu), is due out September 28 in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. According to Kathy Lan of Golden Sun Films, each film in the trilogy will be followed by a 40-episode television spinoff.

The first film’s budget is set at $15 million, with the followup at $20 million, though the movies’ respective tones will lean more to the fantasy genre, instead of horror, to please Chinese censors. The TV spinoffs will feature different casts than the films. The first is scheduled to begin shooting in the fall.

Speaking of the casts, Painted Skin will feature martial arts star Donnie Yen (Dragon Tiger Gate) and Zhou Xun (The Banquet) and Zhao Wei (John Woo’s upcoming Red Cliff) and will be directed by The Medallion’s Gordon Chan. It is described briefly at IMDb as “an action-thriller centered on a vampire-like woman who eats the skins and hearts of her lovers.”

Lan also mentioned that 20 minutes of the film will be screened at Cannes, concluding sales to Japan and Canada. There was no mention of a US release, but with Donnie Yen in the lead, it will find its way here on DVD, at least.

Coming Soon has the news I’ve been waiting to hear all weekend. Not only did Marvel Entertainment spend the weekend revelling the amazing success ($205 million worldwide) of Iron Man, but they let us in on a little bit of news: The release dates of four highly-anticipated upcoming projects.

First on the slate is the much-rumored but now-obvious Iron Man 2 on April 30, 2010, which will be used to introduce Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughan’s Thor, set for June 4, 2010. Then on May 6, 2011, we will see the tentatively titled The First Avenger: Captain America, and The Avengers two months later.

This is of note, of course, because it will continue to build on the Marvel movie “universe,” sort of parallel to the Marvel Comics universe (also known as the 616 universe… to dorks —gm) or the Ultimates universe. Aside from the Thor tie-in with Iron Man 2, Robert Downey Jr. is slated to appear briefly as Tony Stark in the upcoming The Incredible Hulk. Then Captain America will debut (likely in a 1940’s-set origin), leading directly into the Avengers movie.

It was also mentioned that Spider-Man 4 and Ant-Man are both in development.

UPDATE (5/6): Entertainment Weekly cornered with Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau with questions about the Iron Man sequel. From the Robert Downey Jr. interview:

When you were brainstorming with Jon Favreau, what were the elements that you wanted to bring to the next Iron Man movie?

There’s this idea of Terrence [Howard] putting on a suit and coming back as War Machine, who is pretty iconic in the Iron Man and Marvel universe. Just seeing where it can all go, but grounding it in a very modern mythology. I see it as greatest dysfunctional family story ever told…. In the New York Post a couple days ago, [there was a cartoon] of Iron Man suited up, and he’s telling the governor even his super-powers can’t get him out of the budget problem. That was what Jon was hoping for and excited to see the most, the idea that Tony Stark and Iron Man can become part of the cultural fabric. When we heard posters were being defaced to promote political or social ideas, he just got such a hoot out of that.

And from the Jon Favreau interview:

Will you be involved with the sequel?

We’ve been speaking informally about it, and in concept we would all love to work together again. But I found out about the announcement last night, so it’s not something that — we would definitely love to collaborate more with the sequel. There’s no formal arrangement yet, but in theory we would all love to see it happen…. There’s definitely a lot of ideas that we all have now. This type of movie is based on serialized materials, so it lends itself very easily to [many different possibilities]. There’s definitely a level of enthusiasm from myself and the cast to tell more stories.

Related post: Trailer Watch: The Incredible Hulk full trailer; Trailer Watch: The Incredible Hulk teaser (updated)

A trailer for The Dhamma Brothers, a documentary about 36 prisoners with life sentences who undergo a 10-day Buddhist retreat and the controversy that it sparked — about whether it was successful and the propriety of teaching Buddhism to prisoners in the Bible Belt. Not having seen it, I can’t say much about it, save that it looks very interesting.

The Dhamma Brothers is now playing in San Francisco and will hit LA, Seattle, Boston and Portland, Oregon, in the coming weeks. The official website provides dates and locations.

The new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is online over at the official website.

Still looking great to me…

Related posts: Trailer Watch: Indiana Jones