Extras! 15 April 2015

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!

• Can the Avengers cast get any cooler? No, I don’t think they can.

• How much does it cost to piss off some birds? A lot apparently, as its been revealed that the upcoming 3D CGI animated feature film based on popular video game Angry Birds will cost a whopping $185 million dollars. That’s more than it costs to make most Marvel movies!

• The Griswolds are back! Here’s the first look at Vacation, the sequel/reboot (sequoot? rebooquel?) to classic comedy franchise National Lampoons Vacation. This new version stars Ed Helms as grown up Rusty Griswold taking his family to Wally World, the same amusement park his parents took him. And as you can see, those very same parents are back as Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are reprising their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold as well. Somehow though, I don’t think we should be expecting any steamy Ellen Griswold shower scenes this time around

• Poster of the day: The Shining

• After the crappiness of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones I already had about as much interest in watching Shadowhunters – the TV adaptation of the failed movie franchise – as I do in watching Nick wax his back. And yet, ABC have managed to find an additional deterrent by announcing that McG (Charlie’s Angels, Terminator: Salvation) will be directing the entire series.

• Not only will everybody once again be kung fu fighting, but it looks like those kicks are actually going to be coming faster than lightning as Kung Fu Panda 3 has been moved up from its original March 18, 2016 release date to January 29, 2016. Dreamworks Animation hasn’t given a reason for earlier release, but we ain’t complaining.

• And now for something totally different. A video of Dennis Quaid seemingly losing it on the set of some movie he is currently going viral, and for good reason. Short of throwing phones at people Russell Crowe style, this is right up there with some of the biggest actor blowouts of recent years. Warning: This contains lots of NSFW language, so best keep your earphones on.

• So we now know that Captain Marvel won’t be showing up in Avengers: Age of Ultron despite her being in early drafts of the script. But do you know how close it came to her actually being there? Very very “footage was already shot” close, according to Kevin Feige. (Minor spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron)

“[Captain Marvel] was in a draft. But to me, it would have done that character a disservice, to meet her fully formed, in a costume and part of the Avengers already when 99% of the audience would go, ‘Who is that?’ It’s just not the way we’ve done it before.”

“The way we reveal Scarlet Witch [in costume] at the end of the movie? Those were Captain Marvel plate shots [ie. empty background shots where actors are digitally added later]. Joss said, ‘We’ll cast her later!’ And I said, ‘Yeah Joss, we’ll cast her later.’ [Whispers to an invisible associate who isn’t Joss] ‘We’re not putting her in there!’”

• I’ve been lucky in that during my bachelor days, I had a pretty great roommate. But I have heard some horror stories. And what I mean by that is stories of people living with characters from actual horror movies, like Jigsaw from Saw.

• I’m a huge Tom Hanks fan. In my eyes, he can pretty much do no wrong. Or rather, he can only do right. Wilbur and Orville Wright that is. Hanks will be producing an HBO miniseries adaptation of The Wright Brothers, a new book by David McCullough that tells the story of the history making pioneers of motorized flight. Seeing as how Hanks’ last HBO projects – Band of Brothers, The Pacific – turned out, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

• FYI when you hear rappers talking about “making some bread”, this commercial is most definitely not what they mean. Did you hear that, Sylvester Stallone?!

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: April 15, 2015