Extras! 01 October 2014

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!

• Even the most nitpickiest of all of you would have to agree that X-Men: Days of Future Past had some fantastic visual effects, and I’m not just talking about Jennifer Lawrence dressed in nothing but blue body paint. Okay, so I am talking about that, but also this absolutely brilliant featurette on all the digital wizardry the film’s VFX artists pulled off.

• It’s official! Marvel’s TV latest series will be getting some star(k) power as Dominic Cooper has now officially joined the regular cast of Agent Carter reprising his role as WWII tech genius Robert Downey Sr. Howard Stark.

• It’s official! Again! Dwayne Johnson has confirmed on Twitter that he will indeed be starring in an adaptation of Robert “The man who created Jason Bourne” Ludlum’s espionage book The Janson Directive. Universal have been trying to get this spy-party started since 2011, and have now tapped Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend, Fringe) to pen the script.

 

Academy Award winner Akiva Goldsman will write the script. Let’s roll… #Ludlum #Conspiracy #JansonDirective pic.twitter.com/B0tpHu3dL8

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) September 27, 2014

• Poster of the Day: The Shining

• Beloved classic 1988 Tom Hanks film Big is being remade as a TV series by FOX, because of course it is. Kevin Biegel and Mike Royce, the guys behind the recently axed comedy Enlisted, will be writing and executive producing the series which is said to be “loosely based on the movie and would explore what it means to be an adult, what it means to be a kid, and how in today’s world those two things are more confused than ever.”

• And just in case that previous post didn’t make you feel really old and decrepit allow me to see to that with this look at what the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer looks like today. Er… can somebody please tell me Dawn has become a totally different person and Drusilla is now the Joker?

• You may not know it, but in between all the time he spend riding around topless on bears hunting down mountain lions, Russian President Vladimir Putin is an avid film lover and critic. Don’t believe me? Then just check out some of these stellar movie reviews he did recently.

• How’s this for getting the fanboys all foaming at the mouth: David Fincher was actually considering directing Star Wars: Episode VII. The director apparently met with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and Disney, but says that he thinks his idea might have been much too different to what they wanted.

“I talked to Kathy about it, but I think that it’s a different thing from… I don’t know what [the merger of] Disney-Lucasfilm will be like.

“It’s tricky. My favourite is The Empire Strikes Back. If I said, ‘I want to do something more like that,’ then I’m sure the people paying for it would be like, ‘No! You can’t do that! We want it like the other one with all the creatures!’

“I always thought of Star Wars as the story of two slaves [C-3PO and R2-D2] who go from owner to owner, witnessing their masters’ folly, the ultimate folly of man… I thought it was an interesting idea in the first two, but it’s kind of gone by Return Of The Jedi.”

The irony of course, is that just about everybody attached to Episode VII now, from writer-director JJ Abrams right down to the tea-lady on set (probably) have said how they want to go back to recapture the feel and story of that original trilogy, especially The Empire Strikes Back, even bringing in Lawrence Kasdan, the guy who penned that movie.

• If you’ve never heard of the Pixar Theory then you may need to put some “protection” for your head because this video is about to blow your mind.

• Oh c’mon, guys! You know the first rule of Fight Club! Hell, they even made it the second rule as well just to make sure you didn’t forget it! But no, not only are you talking about Fight Club, but you’re talking about everything that is wrong with it!

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: October 1, 2014