Movie Make-out

For all the Witchblade fans still out there, Platinum Studios, Top Cow Productions and Arclight Films have announced a live-action feature adaptation of the popular comic book. The property, which started as a comic book and spawned a telepic and television series, revolves around the titular Witchblade, a bejewelled gauntlet which gives powers to a different, scantilly clad woman, chosen every generation. Arclight CEO Gary Hamilton tells Variety that the film begins shooting in September and will be “the cornerstone of our upcoming production and sales slate.

The Hollywood Reporter has word of an interesting new computer-animated feature in the works at Sparx Animation in Paris and Vietnam. Cereal Heroes is the story of “cartoon cereal box-mascots who are mistakenly brought to life when a plan to replace the world’s fallen superheroes with characters from comic books goes awry. They soon find themselves on the run in an unfamiliar world that only they can save from destruction.”  Kim Possible’s Stephen Silver is designing the characters, with the film seeing release in 2010. Sparx’s first feature, Igor, will be distributed by the Weinstein Company, though Cereal Heroes’ distribution remains undetermined.

And, in news of the completely absurd, UK-based Velvet Octopus has announced that it will be launching sales in Cannes for S. Darko, the sequel to Donnie Darko. Fox has already reserved the North American rights. According to Screen Daily, the film features Daveigh Price as Donnie’s younger sister, Samantha Darko, and picks up seven years after the first movie.  Samantha and her friend Corey are “now 18 and on a roadtrip to Los Angeles when they are plagued by bizarre visions.” Chris Fisher (Nightstalker), the film’s director, has said, “I am a great admirer of Richard Kelly’s film and hope to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality.” Though the producer’s have spoken to Kelly, he is not yet involved in the film. Velvet Octopus’ Simon Crowe also mentions, “I think there is a new generation of cinema-goers who will be very excited to see this film,” and “Donnie’s not in [the new film] but there are meteorites and rabbits.”

Variety has broken that Nu Image/Millennium Films has acquired the film adaptation rights to Buck Rogers, “the venerable pilot who awakens in the 25th Century and battles evil.” Nu Image/Millennium plans to find a studio partner to develop the project, as it has done with Conan, now being developed with Lionsgate.

Buck Rogers began life as Anthony Rogers, in the short storiy “Armageddon 2419 AD.,” which appeared in the August 1928 Amazing Stories. The popularity of that story saw it quickly adapted into a hugely popular comic strip, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which ran from 1929 to 1967. Buck had successful runs in other media, as well, most notably a radio serial running from 1932 to 1947 and the 1938 Buster Crabbe movie serial, although philistines will associate it most with 1979 film and NBC series starring Gil Gerard and (meow) Erin Gray.

IGN’s coverage of this story indicated that Frank Miller was attached to direct, but the produces have since corrected them, saying that directors are still under consideration.

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)

It’s been four years since his last film (Paparazzi) and six since his last starring roles (Signs, We Were Soldiers), but Mel Gibson is officially stepping out of the director’s chair and back onto the screen. Variety has announced that Gibson is signed on to star in a remake of the 1985 television miniseries Edge of Darkness.

Martin Campbell (Casino Royale), who directed the six hour BBC miniseries, will direct. The film will be written and produced by William Monohan and Graham King, respectively. The two last worked together on The Departed.

Gibson is reportedly a great fan of the miniseries, and will play “a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed. He plunges into the case and uncovers systemic corruption that led to his daughter’s death.”

Gibson’s choice of the role is especially noteworthy, given the length of time he has remained, by choice, off screen. Between his obsessive directorial activities and his DUI (and subsequent comments), one wonders if there isn’t some possible significance to his decision return to acting with this film, as opposed to the Sam and George or Under and Alone, which Gibson has had next-at-bat for years. But what? Could it be the chance to not only work on a remake of a miniseries he loved, but underneath the Oscar-winning producers of one of the best films of the past few years? Could be. And if Gibson comes to the film with his A-game, it should be worth it.