Movie Make-out

One of the numerous heartwarming stories that came out of last year’s U.S presidential election was “A Butler Well Served by This Election” written by Wil Haygood for the Washington Post, about Eugene Allen, a black man who had served as a butler and maitre’d at the White House for eight presidential administrations (from Truman to Reagan), and how excited he was to have been able to vote for now-President Barack Obama.

Sony Pictures acquired the feature rights to the article a few weeks after the election, and now Variety is reporting that Danny Strong (Recount) will be adapting the script for The Butler for producer Laura Ziskin (As Good as It Gets, the Spider-Man series).

It’s too early to tell whether or not the film will have the same ending that the feature article did (it ends with former butler Allen’s wife’s death a day before the election) or if there will be some schmaltzy scene at the White House during a fictional version of Obama’s inauguration.

I pray that the latter will not happen.

As usual, I’m a tad conflicted about the news from Variety and other sources that not only has Oliver Stone been confirmed as the director for the previously-reported sequel to 1987’s Wall Street from 20th Century Fox, but there are current negotiations with Shia LaBeouf (also upcoming in Transformers 2) to play the young protege that gets corrupted by Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko.

This time, though, it’s not the choice of cast, Oliver Stone’s recent lackluster effort with W. (according to Box Office Mojo, the damn thing almost didn’t make any money), or the fact that they’re doing yet another freaking sequel that’s got me concerned. Read more

Despite my protests two weeks ago, it looks like Gore Verbinski was indeed jumping ship on Pirates of the Caribbean 4 in order to direct the BioShock adaptation his Take Two productions has been working on. Operative word: was.

According to Variety, Universal has once again developed cold feet while developing a big-budget video game adaptation — the last time being on its co-production (with Sony) of the Peter Jackson-Neill Blomkamp Halo film that never managed to reach escape velocity to get out of development hell.

Upon seeing the film’s budget balloon to $160 million, Universal asked Verbinski and co. to consider shooting the film outside the U.S. (specifically London), in order to take advantage of a tax credit. Verbinski explains, “We are evaluating whether this is something we want to do. In the meantime, the film is in a holding pattern.”

It’s kind of surprising that Universal doesn’t think a $160 million budget is a safe bet with Verbinski in the director’s chair, when that’s only $10 million more than than each of the Pirates sequels, and $35 million more than the surprise-hit first film in that series. The troubled economy can’t even be used as an excuse, because the movie industry has been bucking the recession rather handily.

Anyway, all parties involved with BioShock “vow” that this project will not turn into a repeat of that disappointment, but after letting go some staff for the project, it’s safe to say that BioShock won’t be heading into production for several more months, at least. Whether or not this means one of his umpty-million other projects will slide into the first place on his docket remains to be seen.

P.S. Yes, I only wrote about this because I thought my headline was entirely too clever. I am all kinds of proud of myself.

According to Variety, Robert Rodriguez is has two movies that are coming up on his slate, and as usual, I have mixed feelings about one of them.

The news about which I’m most pleased is that he’s going to be making a full-length movie out of Machete, for which he already created a fake trailer that appeared in Grindhouse. The story is about a Mexican ex-Federale who is hired to come across the U.S. border for a job, gets double-crossed by a corrupt state senator, and vows his revenge.

Danny Trejo will reprise his role as Machete from the trailer, and it will be his first leading role. Rodriguez will be the film’s writer and director, and it will be Rodriguez’ first non-studio film that he’s directed since he did El Mariachi. My biggest hope is that he’s able to recapture the same kind of gleeful lawlessness that inhabited El Mariachi and other films of that style. Filming will hopefully start in June.

The other movie that Rodriguez will be making is Predators for 20th Century Fox, another sequel to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie; no other details have been released at this time.

Ever since the plot of the first Alien vs. Predator movie was revealed and it was not revealed to be the same story as the very awesome Dark Horse comics series, I’ve kinda given up on a good film adaptation of these movie sequels. I lay the blame at my first boyfriend’s feet, because he’s the one who introduced me to both movie franchises, the novels, and the comics, and I immediately found the comics versions to be the best.

This is definitely an “I need to know more” sort of situation.

Last week, I linked to Jezebel.com and one of their writers’ sarcastic reaction to a scene at the end of the red band trailer to Observe and Report, the latest Seth Rogen movie, directed by Jody Hill. The scene in question has Seth Rogen pumping away at an unconscious Anna Faris in bed, who stops but then starts having sex with her again when she says, “Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?”

After saying that I was sure that I would never see a movie that has a scene like that in there for comedic effect, I was then challenged by Gordon to put my money where my mouth is. His point was that I shouldn’t be a dick like Joel Siegel—who famously walked out of Clerks 2 40 minutes into it during a press screening—and have prejudices against a movie I’ve never seen. I agree that having such prejudices is wrong if you want to be a movie critic or journalist, so I agreed to watch the movie and report back to you all this week. Read more