Movie Make-out

As you are probably aware by now, 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke has died. As one of the progenitors of "hard" (realistic) science fiction, the man who proposed the existence of geosynchronous orbit, it is impossible to underestimate the man’s influence on the world, either culturally or scientifically.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno) is in final negotiations to star in the Edgar Wright-helmed Scott Pilgrim’s [Precious] Little Life.

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, if you are sadly unaware, is a blend of teen drama (yes, even though he’s 23) and video game-styled martial arts hijinks (yes, hijinks), and it’s one of the most fun comics of recent years. The comics’ official site sums up the series thusly:

Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old guy living in the big city with his gay roommate, just trying to make his way in this crazy world.

Scott Pilgrim likes the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers, but to win her heart, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Wait, what?

This project, an adaptation of the first book in the six-volume series (of which four have been released), has been on the slow cooker for a couple of years now, so it’s good to hear some rumblings in the casting arena. Cera is very funny, but he seems a bit sleepy to play the borderline hyperactive Pilgrim. Who knows, though? Maybe Cera will surprise us with some actual range.

Cera has at least two projects on his slate before Scott Pilgrim happens, though: Year One with Jack Black and Youth in Revolt for Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl). Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) is also attached to Marvel’s Ant Man and an original sci-fi comedy, Them, but has nothing set for his next project, but the HR article mentions that they’re "eyeing a fall start" on Scott Pilgrim, so if this actually moves forward, it’s likely to be this.

Variety informs us Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) is directing a new adaptation of Dune… um… except we already knew that back in December. The article does debut the news that ”the project is out to writers, with the producers looking for a faithful adaptation of the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book,” however, unlike the 1984 version by David Lynch — and presumably not shitty, like the 2000 TV mini-series. (Full disclosure: I’ve only seen a few minutes of the mini-series. They were enough.)

The Hollywood Reporter sez Orlando Bloom has dropped out of a supporting role in the Nick Hornby-scripted An Education, which has just begun shooting. He is being replaced by Dominic Cooper (The History Boys).

The Sydney Morning Herald keeps calling the Justice League of America film Justice League Mortal, and George Miller is annoyed that the board of Australia’s Film Finance Corporation has just turned down a tax rebate for the project (meaning they can’t — or won’t — film there), once again putting this fanboy’s nightmare project into jeopardy, I guess. Note to fanboys: Shut up about the age of the cast, already. For Christ’s sake.

Jason Segel talks to MTV about the Muppet movie he’s developing: It’s centered around Kermit, and will try to take the Muppets away from the all the Muppet “high-concept” flicks of recent years (Muppets in Space, Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island) and get “back to… when it was about the Muppets trying to put on a show.”

Update: One more thing today: OneRing.net (whose server seems overloaded as I write this) has broken the non-news that Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pan’s Labyrinth) is still not signed onto the Hobbit films. “Negotiations advance but are still ongoing,” del Toro told the site.

Related posts: Justice League, Where the Wild Things Are set for 2009,  The girl in the photo is not Orlando Bloom, Guillermo del Toro still not directing The Hobbit…

ShockTillYouDrop.com has the exclusive trailer for the upcoming Shakespearean vampire riff, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead. (No real connection to Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, although apparently he’s cool with the title lift.) The trailer is very funny, the soundtrack by Sean Lennon sounds wonderfully catchy, and there are some pretty sharp visuals in there, as well, shot with the new Red One digital system. The film centers around a young New Yorker hired to direct an off-Broadway version of Hamlet that’s been written by the leader of a vampire coven. Jake Hoffman, Devon Aoki, John Ventimiglia, Kris Lemche, Jeremy Sisto and Ralph Macchio star.

An extremely funny, full trailer for Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder — with more than a little taste of how RDJ is playing his "black" character — is up at the film’s official site. (For more on the film, check the related posts, as always.)

Update: A domestic trailer for Roger Spottiswoode’s The Children of Huang Shi has gone up at the film’s official (English-language) site. The drama tells the (based on a) true story of George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a British journalist who helped a group of 60 Chinese orphans escape from the invading Japanese in 1937. Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black), Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh co-star in the Chinese-Australian-German co-production.

Related posts: CONTROVERSY! Robert Downey, Jr., wears crackaface in Tropic Thunder, Trailer Watch: Tropic Thunder teaser, Foot Fist Way; also, there are idiots on the internet

The Associated Press and Coming Soon have reported that Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella (Cold Mountain) has died at 54, of a brain hemorrhage during a "routine operation on his neck," apparently for cancer. He won a Best Director Oscar for The English Patient and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

His final feature, an adaptation of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has been completed and is scheduled for release this year. He was set to shoot a short for the upcoming New York, I Love You (a thematic sequel to last year’s Paris, Je T’aime anthology); the fate of his short is unclear, but it has presumably been written, since other shorts for the feature are already shooting.

Update: Added details regarding Minghella’s death and about his involvement with New York, I Love You.

The New York Times has a really cool article about the woman who founded Film Streams, not-for-profit art house movie theater in Omaha, Nebraska. Rachel Jacobson, a 29 year old Omaha native,

said in an interview, [that] though there are certainly more of them being made nowadays — (the showing of small films) is not great business. “That’s why a nonprofit is the way to go,” she said. “Because that’s the only business plan that allows you to show good movies. The multiplexes have just taken over, especially in cities like this.”

Later in the article Jacobson says that they needed to sell about 30,000 tickets per year to "meet our expectations"; they’ve sold 30,000 since they opened on July 27, 2007. Not too shabby.

A recent Variety article discussed the huge growth in the "mid-budget" ($20–60 million) film. One very interesting chunk (and there’s much more to the article):

In 2002, about 450 films were released in the U.S. In 2007, the tally was about 600. "All of that growth is independent film," Glickman trumpeted.

But those 150 extra pics mean distribs are fighting for smaller pieces of the box office pie, and it’s gotten tougher and more expensive to grab moviegoers’ attention.

"We’d like to get the titles spread out better over the year," admits NATO prexy John Fithian. "If we didn’t have four blockbusters competing on the same weekend, the titles would spread out and the theaters would put in a smaller art picture and not keep eating each other’s lunch."

Update (3/17/08): The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that one of the largest movie theater chains in the country, Regal Entertainment Group, has decided to allow red-band (R-rated/restricted) trailers to play in its theaters, after an almost industry-wide moratorium on them following a damning 2000 FTC report. The chain had ruled them out for fear of offending customers and concerns that an R-rated trailer might accidentally get screened before a PG- or G-rated flick. (The widespread adoption of digital projection systems has apparently allayed this second concern.) Other major chains are expected to follow suit.

The good? R-rated comedies like Superbad and Pineapple Express will once again be able to show trailers that more accurately and effectively market their films. The bad? Those god damn horror movie trailers that plague me every time I see movies are probably going to get a whole lot worse.

Update (3/22/08): The New York Times has a kind of snapshot of the turbulent times in the movie theater business: "At Cineplexes, Sports, Opera, Maybe a Movie" by Brooks Barnes. Many of you regular movie-goers have already seen ads for the Metropolitan Opera, and I’ve covered the 3D phenomenon in other posts, but apparently tickets to a Mets simulcast sold out quickly enough to encourage the team to do more this summer.

As the article states, "Operators want people to think of theaters as vibrant, busy places. But when weekends account for 70 percent of movie ticket sales, multiplex parking lots spend a lot of time sitting empty." How theaters choose to cultivate their Mondays through Thursdays in the next few years is going to be interesting.…

Related post: 2007 box office breaks a record, ticket sales flat; Monsters vs. Aliens to be first true 3D animated film (updated)

Variety reports that The Others director Alejandro Amenabar’s previously-untitled Egyptian epic now has a name: Agora. The film stars Rachel Weisz as the real-life 4th century Egyptian "astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world." Max Minghella (Art School Confidential) has joined the cast as her lovestruck slave.

The nerd-movie news sites are running with one word from the recent press release announcing for Universal exec Mary Parent’s appointment to Chairperson of the Worldwide Motion Picture Group at Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Of course, that word is Robocop. The release says, "With the appointment of Parent, MGM will enter its new phase of evolution by focusing on its major movie franchises highlighted by JAMES BOND and PINK PANTHER sequels, THE HOBBIT, THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR 2, THE OUTER LIMITS, ROBOCOP, DEATH WISH and FAME, among others." This means a possible sequel/reboot is in development, but doesn’t really mean that it will ever happen. If a screenwriter and/or director get attached, maybe start actually getting your hopes up.

NBC and News Corp.’s online video on demand site Hulu has launched, with free, advertising-supported episodes of The Simpsons, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office and other popular TV shows — and (the reason I mention it here) some movies, too! There aren’t a ton of full-length movies yet, but the ones they have include The Big Lebowski, Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (below), Requiem for a Dream, and a bunch of other great ones. Yes, ads are evil, but a few ads in exchange for not having to run out to the video store, wait for Netflix, or buy it from iTunes (if they even have it)? Hell yeah. I’m sure I’ll be visiting Hulu soon. Watch Kagemusha now (and keep in mind, you can go full-screen if you watch it over at Hulu).

Update: Uh oh. Hulu loses a lot of points for their Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World being pan-and-scanned and edited for content. I don’t watch pan-and-scans.

Related posts: Weisz joins Amenabar’s Egyptian epic