Movie Make-out

AMPTP Goes On the Record About Today’s ‘Off the Record’ Meeting with SAG
Just in time for the evening news, the AMPTP released a statement yesterday which emphatically notes that SAG negotiators asked for the meeting, not them, and that they’re agreeing to it so they can listen to what SAG has to say–but they will not be renegotiating against their final offer. The meeting will take place this afternoon. Incidentally, I found SAG’s non-corporate website that’s devoted to rallying its members around the cause, and I have only this to say: Hire some people from the WGA or some people from Fans4Writers to conduct your website PR campaign, okay?

Robin Williams to Channel Dark Side Again in World’s Greatest Dad
Screechy comedian Bobcat Goldtwaith wrote and will direct the dark comedy, according to Variety, which is all about how a single father and high school deals with and covers up the fact that his son died in an autoerotic asphyxiation accident. Yes, you heard me: autoerotic asphyxiation. What’s next, a rom-com about the furry community? (First commenter to find me such a film gets mad props.)

While many of you are happily packing for the next week’s annual trek to Nerd Prom, aka the San Diego Comic Con (I refuse to call it Comic Con International), I will be crying into my beer because I haven’t been to a Comic Con since 2002. I’ve got many happy memories from Comic Cons past, including the time where I was immortalized in a Lea Hernandez Near Life Experience webcomic panel for which I’m always going to regret not buying the original art… but I digress.

Nonetheless, I will be wishing you much happiness and joy as you will have the toughest choices ahead of you. Will you blow your wad in the first 15 minutes, or will you wait till Sunday and pray that what you want to buy hasn’t been picked up by someone else? Will you wait in line for panels or will you wait in line at autograph booths? Will you be rejected at the bar by a hottie or whoop it up at the Masquerade? Will you use your DS to Pictochat during the Eisner awards ceremony or will you be Twittering?

Luckily, Movie Make-out is here to take some decisions out of your hands and help guide you through what we consider to be the cream of the convention’s movie and film-related offerings for Thursday and Friday.

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Paramount Gets the Band Back Together for School of Rock 2
Variety reports that lead actor Jack Black, director Richard Linklater, screenwriter Mike White, and producer Scott Rudin are attached to create the sequel, which involves prep school teacher Dewey Finn taking a group of summer school students on a cross-country field trip to explore the history of rock and roll. Music history class has never been so full of throwaway gags.

German Film Features Most Under-Appreciated Movie Profession: Accountancy
Yella opens this week in New York on Friday, but the tongue-in-cheek NY Times article also introduces three other European flicks that feature accountants as more than just a stick-in-the mud (Ghostbusters) or the straight man to a more interesting character (both versions of The Producers.)

X-Files Sequel Next in Long Marketing Line of Rebooted Franchises
The Hollywood Reporter turns in a very basic fluff piece that details what the marketing machines did to promote new movies from old series. Line in the article that may make you realize exactly how old you are? “Much of this complaining [about updating the movie franchise] occurs on the Internet, which was largely unimagined when many of these properties were last seen.”

Related Posts: Trailer Watch: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

As expected, Hellboy II cleaned up at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo’s early estimates. (Note: Link will be updated with more accurate numbers later this afternoon.) The Guillermo del Toro-helmed sequel to the 2004 film had an estimated U.S. weekend gross of $35,885,000, beating its other two premiere rivals Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D and Meet Dave by at least $15 million. In its second week, however, Will Smith’s superhero movie Hancock was right behind Hellboy II with a respectable $33 million.

Meanwhile, in five Asian territories, John Woo’s Red Cliff garnered an estimated $23 million and Universal’s international release of Mamma Mia! also earned about $24 million in English-speaking countries, according to Variety. The BBC was also a big winner this weekend, for its docudrama 10 Days to War starring Kenneth Branagh scooped up two awards at the second annual Roma Fiction Fest.

In the midst of all the celebration, however, there was sad news to report, for actress Evelyn Keyes (Suellen from Gone With the Wind) passed away on Saturday at the age of 91, battling uterine cancer.

Related posts: John Woo Romances Asia with Epic Three Kingdoms Tale, Will Give U.S. Audiences Mere Taste in January ‘09; 1949 after Red Cliff for John Woo; Trailer Watch: Love Songs, Diary of the Dead, Red Cliff

It’s obviously a slow news day, because people are actually latching onto this. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

In the course of the past couple of weeks, Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov and Warner Bros. Pictures president Kevin McCormick have been meeting with DC Comics executives as well some of DC’s top talents, like Jim Lee, to discuss a new direction for film adaptations.

Obviously, in the wake of Marvel’s mega-success with Iron Man and it’s middling success with The Incredible Hulk, and the news of their planned build-up to The Avengers, Warner Brothers is apparently realizing that DC’s heroes have a hell of a lot more potential. The trouble is, from my perspective, how can they take the flagship film franchise — Chris Nolan’s Batman — and make that fit in a super-hero universe? It just wouldn’t make sense. Honestly, I would reeeaaaally like them to consider taking things their characters into big-budget animation, even if it has to be CGI, not traditional. The straight-to-DVD stuff they’ve done has been good, but they’re continually cheaping out on the animation and the stories — clocking in at under an hour and a half — are too rushed to really pull off the epic scope a true feature-length movie needs. Come on, guys, let’s see some Batman: Mask of the Phantasm-quality shit! The animation route effectively side-steps any continuity issues, and the Timm/Dini universe pretty much nailed the DC characters perfectly anyway.

Variety chimes in with an overlong story saying the same thing, but also sums up the DC superhero movie state of the union. Aside from The Dark Knight and the upcoming Watchmen from Zack Snyder, there’s writer-director Greg Berlanti’s Green Lantern, producer Joel Silver’s languishing Wonder Woman, David Dobkin’s The Flash, and “internet chatter about an Aquaman movie,” which is a nothing more than a whole lot of wishful thinking.

As for the other properties, we also know that Justice League is dead and while Superman is possibly going to be taken away from Bryan Singer for a reboot, rumors about Louis Leterrier and/or Mark Millar having the reins are inaccurate (to be kind).

For their part, Warner has said said this about the “superhero summit” (to HR):

While we are not going to go into the specifics of the meetings, we’re constantly looking at how best to exploit the DC Comics characters and properties. DC is an incredibly valuable asset to Warner Bros. and plays an important role across the entire studio by providing development and franchise opportunities for all media, including films, television, home entertainment, animation, consumer products, video games and digital platforms.

And of course, the word “exploit” has gotten a bunch of fanboy panties in a bunch, but it’s a perfectly acceptable word, despite its often negative connotations, so please. Spare me.

Related posts: Mark Millar wants Superman, Update on Tales of the Black Freighter, Watchmen character photos online, As if Iron Man wasn’t awesome enough (updated), Tales of the Black Freighter… anime? (updated), Justice League, Where the Wild Things Are set for 2009

Variety’s Peter Bart Uses Hancock to Call Out the Film Ratings Board
Stating that the Will Smith movie’s violent content was arguably far worse than the gross-out sexual innuendo humor in The Love Guru, Bart brings up the notion that once again, indie films are given the shaft when it comes to fair treatment and states, “Given all the inconsistencies of their rulings, they’d probably turn out to be a bunch of former IRS accountants.” Um, burn?

Eddie Murphy Misses Own Movie Premiere
The Meet Dave star was said to be off shooting for his next movie, A Thousand Words. Funny that, though… Dave’s director Brian Robbins is also the director for Words and he managed to make it to the premiere. Best part? Nikki Finke says she’s got sources that say it was Murphy who wanted a big premiere to happen in the first place. Of course, Murphy’s people are denying this, but c’mon…

OMG! Yahoo Gets Into the Fame-Gossip Game
Click that above link only if you want to sear your retinas.

From Nikki Finke over at Deadline Hollywood comes the most recent missives between, around, and betwixt the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) groups. Let’s summarize in a much more simpler way, shall we?

AMPTP: Yo, SAG? We totally wanna make deal with you, which is why we’re telling you that if you just ratify the contract, we’ll make give you retroactive back pay to July 1. Fer sure! But listen up, if you don’t ratify the contract by August 15, we’re going to make you wait till your next pay period. And considering that some of you might not actually be working actors, who knows when that will be? (Ed. Note: They didn’t say that in the statement, but everybody’s thinking it.) Listen, we’re giving you $250 million more and actually trying to do something about this new-fangled Intarweb thing, so just freaking ratify it already, would ya?

SAG: Chill out, dudes. We wanna talk to you guys in person rather than jump the gun and let the media vultures pick apart our statements like they are probably already doing right now.

AMPTP: Oh, and btw, California state legislators? We totally did our part in giving the SAG folks fair demands and time frames and whatnot, and if this draws out any longer, it’s totally their fault, not ours. Neener-neener!

SAG: Fuck that! It’s so totally not a fair enough deal, and we totally don’t like the fact that the meanie-head producers are trying to diss us to you O benevolent legislators who we may want to turn to later on. It’s their fault for not giving us every single thing we asked for, and if there is a slowdown in one of California’s biggest exports, it’s because they’re not negotiating with us and giving us everything we want.

Update: Variety reports that SAG nixed the final offer and is also refusing to send it to its 120,000 members for a vote. They did, however, also present a counter-offer.

The AMPTP responded — and I paraphrase — “Dude, we’re just giving you what we gave the writer dudes, the director dudes, and the TV and radio dudes, so why you film folks gotta give us such problems? It’s totally your fault if you make this bad economy even worse for us Hollywood folks.”

No word yet on what the next step is going to be.