Home Entertainment Extras! 13 October 2014

Extras! 13 October 2014

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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!

  • Rumour-Man, Rumour-Man! Does whatever a rumour can!… And in the case of Sony’s plans for their not quite successful Amazing Spider-Man franchise, these rumours can do a lot. Fresh from recent rumblings that Sony and Marvel are talking about some form of crossover with Marvel Universe movies, comes this nugget: Apparently Sony are so displeased with the recently rebooted franchise, that they’re considering rebooting it again. According to rumour-mongers, the studio has scrapped Alex Kurtzman’s Venom spinoff entirely and will be using Drew Goddard’s Sinister Six spinoff as a “soft reboot” that will see Spider-Man being recast once again.

I’m going to call guano on this one for now, as its almost universally recognized that the one thing about the franchise that definitely works better than anybody could have hoped for, is Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man. Recasting that role makes zero sense. What I think is happening here is that Sony genuinely are worried about the franchise and so now they’re spitballin’ all kinds of wacky ideas to figure out the way forward. Doesn’t mean that any of these ideas will ever come to pass though.

  • Speaking of wacky ideas (but ones that actually make total sense), Marvel announced earlier in the year that they will be releasing a Guardians of the Galaxy animated series on Disney XD, and at this weekend’s New York Comic Con, they surprised audiences with the first sneak peek at the show.

  • We’ve had the Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead and hell, even The Talking Dead, but apparently we still haven’t had our fill of (un)dead things yet, so get ready for The Other Dead, asAnimal Planet has picked up the rights to adapt Joshua Ortega and Digger Mesch’s zombie apocalypse comic book. Now you might have done a double-take at the words “Animal Planet”, as the animal-centric US cable channel is not exactly the place you would normally find zombie drama series. But that’s the catch here: The Other Dead is “The world’s first Zombie Animal epic”. The story tells of what happens when “a deadly hurricane threatens New Orleans just as a frightening and mysterious outbreak hits the animal kingdom!”
  • Speaking of comic book adaptations, here’s the first look at Angelica Celaya as new leading lady Zed in ABC’s Constantine. While Zed is a central character in the comics, as both a former lover of Constantine’s as well as a formidable magic practitioner in her own right, she wasn’t supposed to be in the TV series. As you may recall, Lucy Griffiths’ Liv was created specifically for the show and was supposed to be the female lead, however after test screenings of the pilot episode, it was decided to write hor out an recast the female lead with somebody who can stack up to Constantine better, as Lucy was just considered too “wide-eyed” and “reactive”.

Constantine - Season 1

  • Poster of the day: Daredevil

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  • I had a reasonably decent time with Dracula Untold, but there are many people who found it more sucky than bloodsucking. If you’re one of these and wished that the film’s writers, Matt Sazama and Burt Sharpless, could just get shot into space or something, well then you’ve just had your wish granted. Kinda. Buoyed on Dracula Untold‘s decent box-office performance, Universal have tapped the writing duo to write/executive produce a new TV series reboot of the cult 1960’s series.

The original, which aired for 83 episodes and featured music by John Williams years before he would do Star Wars, followed the Robinsons, a family that is sent into space on a 5-year voyage to explore a new planet, but who gets lost in space after their ship is sabotaged. There was a movie adaptation in 1998, but it starred Matt LeBlanc and we don’t speak about it.

  • I’ve long ago given up on trying to understand why James Franco does the things he does, so I’m not even going to try and explain this Dirty Dancing/Reservoir Dogs mash-up that he did.

  • Right, Bat-history time! After the success of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, he signed on to make a third movie that would feature Robin, who was going to be played by a young Marlon Wayans. Wayans had the costume fitted and everything, however Warner Bros felt that Batman Returns was too dark, and wanted more of that family friendly movie dollars, so they told Burton to tone down the darkness. Burton refused and walked, so the studio brought on Joel Schumacher, who promptly threw out just about everything that Burton had already done. The result was that Michael Keaton and Marlon Wayans (who got his full anyway) bailed on the project, and Schumacher completely retooled the movie with Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell as Batman Forever.

But what would Burton’s movie have looked like? Well, we’ll never know, since there’s very little about it that has been made public. Luckily though, a piece of concept art for his version of Robin has   finally surfaced and it looks…. well, it looks like the offspring of Batman and Wolverine actually. Also, I’m 99.9999% sure that that’s not modeled on Marlon Wayans.

TimBurton_Batman_Robin_69kx2M6

  • Staying with some Bat-lore, Variety has a fantastic interview with Joel Schumacher, where he reveals that he was actually quite surprised that people had a problem with the Bat-nipples in his universally panned Batman & Robin, the sequel to Batman Forever. Because somehow the term “Bat-nipples” didn’t raise any warning flags. His lack of foresight forgive, Schumacher was also very candid though in appropriating blame for the movie that very nearly killed the franchise and would become one of the biggest running jokes in Hollywood.

“Val [Kilmer] left at eleventh hour to do “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” It changed everything. George [Clooney] made a noble effort. I was the problem with “Batman & Robin.” I never did a sequel to any of my movies, and sequels are only made for one reason: to make more money and sell more toys. I did my job. But I never got my ass in the seat right.

They immediately wanted a sequel, but I said yes. There’s nobody else to blame but me. I could have said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” I just hope whenever I see a list of the worst movies ever made, we’re not on it. I didn’t do a good job. George did. Chris [O’Donnell] did. Uma [Thurman] is brilliant in it. Arnold is Arnold.

  • Season 5 of The Walking Dead kicked off on US screens last night, and to celebrate, the guys at Bad Lip Reading are back with some more, well, bad lip reading!

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 13, 2014

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