Home Entertainment Extras! Arnie's headed for The Tomb, Xerxes has been cast, Movies banned in foreign countries for weird reasons and a Robo With a Shotgun?! Plus much more!

Extras! Arnie's headed for The Tomb, Xerxes has been cast, Movies banned in foreign countries for weird reasons and a Robo With a Shotgun?! Plus much more!

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Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

A short while back we reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger might possibly be joining Sylvester Stallone in a hi-tech prison action film titled The Tomb. Well now it’s has been confirmed via press release that Governator will be involved, while Mikael Håfström (The Rite, 1408) will direct. Shooting is expected to commence within the first quarter of this year.

And for those of you that are as old (and hopefully not as incontinent) as these action heroes, and may have forgotten what the film is all about, here’s a reminder:

The Tomb follows Ray Breslin (Stallone) who is the world’s foremost authority on structural security. He’s analyzed every high security prison and has gained a vast array of survival skills. But all Ray’s ingenuity and knowledge are about to be put to work in the most challenging test he’s ever faced: escaping from the master prison of his own design. Schwarzenegger, in the role of Church, plays a complex inmate with multiple shades of grey. He’s the guy who fights to keep the prisoners from losing their humanity in their darkest hour as they struggle together to stay alive.

Not being content to not only be the highest grossing R-Rated female comedy of all time with $288 million during it’s theatrical run, THR reports that Bridesmaids has gone on to earn an additional $40 million from 4.8 million rentals in the US alone, making it the most-ordered Video On Demand title of all time. This is of course excluding the $100 million it made on DVD and Blu Ray sales.

In short, Bridesmaids made stupid amounts of money. Who would ever have thought that watching ladies act crude would be this profitable? Well, except for strip club owners, of course.

300: The Battle of Artemisium, the pre/sequel to Zack Snyder’s musclebound meme-athon, has found it’s lead character in Animal Kingdom and Strike Back star, Sullivan Stapleton. He will playing the Persian king-turned-self-proclaimed-god-turned-middle-eastern-fashionista, Xerxes. He will be joining Eva Green (Casino Royale, Perfect Sense) previously cast as Artemisia. Snyder will no longer be at the helm though, with Noam Murro (Smart People) now directing.

FlavorWire has an interesting article on Movies Banned in Foreign Countries for Weird Reasons. And really some of them are real head scratchers.

The Simpsons Movie (2007), banned in Burma

Why did the repressive government of Burma decide not to let the Simpsons into their country? Was it the nudity, the slapstick violence, the dangerous values of Western culture? Was it Spider-Pig?

Nope. Apparently at one time the country’s Motion Picture and Video Censor Board banned the colors red and yellow in movies. According to Burmese comedian Zarganar, the board will issue edicts like this without warning and then repeal them later the same afternoon. Poor Homer and his yellow family were never going to win against that kind of bizarre thinking.

Surprisingly though, Sex and the City 2 was not banned in the UAE because of it’s unethical treatment of horses. Making them walk around in high heel shoes is just not humane.

Deadline is reporting that Disney has acquired the rights to Kelly Marcel’s script, Saving Mr. Banks. What makes this acquisition unique for Disney, is that the script deals with the 14 years it took Walt Disney himself ,to persuade P.L. Travers to sell him the rights to Mary Poppins. Poppins went to be a Disney smash hit, however Travers was extremely displeased with the cartoonish changes Disney made to the very personal story she had written about the hardships in her life and how she came to terms with her father’s death at age 7. She was so upset with the final product that she refused to sell him any more of her works.

Disney (the company, not the man this time)  apparently wants this to be a star-driven film, and the rumours of Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep playing Disney and Travers respectively, certainly supports that.

There seems to be a new genre emerging in Hollywood: The doomsday-romantic-drama. Continuing the trend set by The Perfect Sense, but replacing sombre atmosphere with quirky cuteness is Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World. The film stars Steve Carell as a man who receives a letter from his old high school sweetheart, just before the end of the world, saying that she would like to spend doomsday with him. Keira Knightley plays his quirky neighbour who accompanies him on the road trip. How much do you want to bet that along the way they find out they have feelings for each other?

Well, inevitable predictability aside, it’s being directed by Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist writer, Lorene Scafaria, and also stars the likes of Adam Brody, Patton Oswalt and Melanie Lynskey. Here’s the new poster for the film:

And finally, we end on this little piece of brilliance. I’m not a fan of this new trend of intentionally B-Grade grindhouse films. Gratuitously violent and self-referencing films like Hobo With A Shotgun just don’t appeal to me at all. Unless they’re made in clay, that is.

That’s it for me for today. I need to go work on this new Zombie apocalypse-kabuki mashup I’m putting together. It’s going to be the next big thing, I tell ya.

Last Updated: February 9, 2012

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