Taylor Lautner reaches for Stretch Armstsrong
Someday, I would really like to meet Brian Grazer, look him in the eye and say, “What the hell were you thinking?!”
The latest WTF-ery from the man who produced Real Genius and The Da Vinci Code—but who also produced Undercover Brother and Fun With Dick and Jane—is that Twilight werewolf Taylor Lautner will be playing the titular role in the Stretch Armstrong movie that will now be released in 2012 due to being filmed for 3D.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, the plot now goes something like this:
The story developed for the movie, being produced by Imagine and Hasbro, sees an uptight spy who stumbles across a stretching formula, which he takes and must now adjust to in everyday life and when fighting crime.
When I think of Lautner, I don’t think of the word “uptight,” but I think I get why they used the word because now Armstrong has got to expand his boundaries and his imagination to fight crime, yadda, yadda. It’s just the plot seems so boring and now the movie’s starring someone I only like because he looks pretty.
Also noted by THR is the fact that Battleship is getting a sci-fi veneer onto its action plot and that the release date for that film is also getting pushed back to Memorial Day 2012. I’m not sure what director Peter Berg is thinking either because the game is all about the Cold War and it’s also the original turn-based strategy game… hey wait, could he be changing the thought behind the game mechanics and drawing inspiration from Starcraft?
Related Posts: Production date set for Brian Grazer’s Stretch Armstrong movie, Universal and Hasbro sign a six-year pact (updated)
CommentsTrailer Watch: Red band Cop Out trailer
Oh, Kevin Smith, I think you won my heart back again.
That’s what I’m talking about! Well-framed talking heads dialogue, snappy banter, crude sexual humor… that’s the Kevin Smith whose films I’ve loved.
All is forgiven for caving in on the movie title. Cop Out (formerly known as A Couple of Dicks) hits the streets on February 26, 2010.
Related Posts: Trailer Watch: Cop Out trailer
CommentsSony, Lionsgate bid for Terminator
Have 15 million or so you don’t know what to do with? You too could own your very own (slightly ailing) science fiction franchise!
Not really. According to Variety, Sony has entered the bidding war over the Terminator franchise, joining Lionsgate who started things off last month with a floor bid of the aforementioned 15 million, and 5% of future receipts.The final day to submit offers was Thursday, and the “auction for the assets of the series, including rights to future films, DVD sales, TV series, and merchandise, will be held Monday.”
Halcyon Group, which bought the franchise in 2007 for 30 million, put it up for sale in September. The group filed for Chapter 11 after the purchase a result of a feud with the hedge fund which backed the purchase.
No matter the outcome, it looks like Lionsgate walks away at least partially a winner, as they’re guaranteed a $750,000 “break-up” fee from the winning bidder.
Terminator: Salvation, the fourth film in the series, was released this past year, pulling in about $372 million worldwide from a $200 million production budget. It’s widely regarded as a flop, however, because its domestic haul was only $125 million.
Related Post: Trailer Watch: Second full Terminator: Salvation Trailer
CommentsDreamworks is taking us to The Museum of SuperNatural History
Maybe we could sell Movie Make-out: The Movie.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dreamworks is looking into turning popular blog Musunahi, or the Museum of SuperNatural History, into a film. The blog’s curator, Ernest Lupinacci, who considers his website a “trans-media brand to be to the paranormal world what National Geographic is to the real world” is coming on as executive producer.
On any given day, another ancient temple is uncovered by Google Earth and NASA telescopes come closer to finding intelligent life in the galaxy. Science is on the verge of cloning extinct creatures, and man and machine are approaching the so-called singularity. These sorts of things all contribute to the enduring fascination and universal appeal of this subject matter. The supernatural is ‘the make believe you can believe in.’
Dreamworks and Producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald (Dinner for Schmucks, Motorcade) are talking with writers over how to best draft those ideas into a film which would “center on the curator of the covert Museum of Supernatural History, who must seek out and protect the world’s best kept secrets.”
CommentsDanny McBride goes undercover as an L.A. P.I.
I’ve been thinking a lot about screenwriters recently because I’ll be helping a friend do a reading in March and any time I hear that a writer or a writing team has landed a deal, I give a little cheer because I know how hard it is to create new stories for a jaded audience.
I’m not sure how much this applies to writers Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan who sold their script L.A. P.I. to Rough House, the production company set up by actor Danny McBride and his collaborators Jody Hill (director of Observe and Report) and David Gordon Green (director of Pineapple Express and Your Highness, which also stars McBride).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hill will direct and McBride will star as a private investigator in L.A.—obviously—but almost every other detail about the plot is being kept tightly under wrap.
I can’t decide whether or not this is a good move as when you think about Los Angeles and fictional private detectives, you think about Phillip Marlowe or Jim Rockford, right? Also, the film is being described as an action-comedy, which I think means there’s going to be less sleuthing and more antics, which as a fan of the detective genre I’m not sure I can fully support.
This isn’t the first deal for Diliberti and Sullivan, as they’ve been tasked with re-adapting Brewster’s Millions for Warner Bros., and according to IMDBPro, their first script Comic Con has an option out on it, but doesn’t state which studio has it.
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