Extras! 16 April 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!

• Ever wondered what it would be like if Disney had made Breaking Bad? Of course you haven’t, because you actually take the good pills. Irrespective though, the internet has an answer to that question.

• You might recall that Bryan Singer said that we might see fan favourite card throwing Cajun superhero Gambit in X-Men Apocalypse, and it looks like a certain Charmin Potato may just get to play him. Channing Tatum has previously hinted at his love of the character and how much he would love to take on the role. That love appears to becoming reality, as he has apparently now met with X-Men producer Laura Shuler Donner about it (via /Film). You know, the same Laura Shuler Donner that said she wanted to make a Gambit solo movie with – yep, you guessed it – Channing Tatum in the lead.

“I met with Lauren Shuler Donner. And I would love it. Gambit is really the only X-Man I’ve ever loved. I mean I’ve loved them all, they’re all great, but I guess from being down south – my dad’s from Louisiana, I’m from Mississippi, Alabama, Florida – I don’t know. I just related to him. He’s just kind of suave… He’s the most un X-Men X-Man that’s ever been in X-Men. Other than maybe Wolverine, who’s like the anti-hero. He’s a thief. He’s not even a hero. He’s kind of walking the line of grey…He loves women and drinking and smoking and stuff so he’s just a cool guy who happens to have a moral center….I hope it [comes together]. You never know it’s a weird industry. If the stars align, I would die to play it. I’m already working on the accent. It’s crappy at the moment.”

• Poster of the Day: vintage Gravity poster

• “Do you like tacos, Ricky Bobby?!” Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly will be reteaming with their Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby director, Will McKay, for a new comedy, Border Guards. Penned by Oscar nominated In the Loop screenwriter Jesse Armstrong, the film will see the duo as “two hapless but earnest friends who decide to give purpose to their lives by protecting America’s borders from illegal immigrants. In the process they find themselves accidentally stranded in Mexico without identification and must sneak back into the U.S.”

• If you’re already not a fan of Jaden Smith, then you’re probably going to be even less of a fan of Jaden Smith as a girl. Will Smith’s progeny has signed on to star opposite Liev Schrieber in the The Good Lord Bird, an adaptation of James McBride’s 2013 National Book Award winner. The film will see Smith as “Henry “Onion” Shackleford, a young slave who links up with radical abolitionist John Brown (Schreiber) in 1856 Kansas and travels the nation with Brown’s motley crew of freedom fighters. Story is told with a satirical bent through the eyes of Onion, who wears a dress and is at first mistaken for a girl, as he bears witness to Brown’s historic campaign and encounters the likes of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman en route to the bloody Harper’s Ferry raid that helped spark the Civil War. “

• During last night’s episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC aired a new promo for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

• With the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, comic book villains are more popular than ever. So how do you create a lasting baddie like the Joker, Magneto, Doctor Doom, etc,  that people will love? Well, it’s simple: you base them on real people. Or in the case of the Red Skull, on a chocolate sundae.

• The Black List is an annual list (duh) made up the hottest unmade scripts in Hollywood, compiled by polling 500 Hollywood executives on the best scripts they had read in the previous year and assigning them a score. Having you script end up on the Black List is a big deal, as it means that a lot of people have read and liked your work. Some major films have come from the Black List. Unfortunately, so too have some serious stinkers, because as we know, a good script doesn’t necessarily make a good movie overall. And to give you some examples of how things can go both very right (The Social Network) and very wrong (Abduction – yes, that Taylor Lautner movie), Playlist has compiled this list of the 20 Best and Worst Films Made From Black List Scripts.

• Here’s a new still from the Wachowski siblings’ Jupiter Ascending, proving once and for all that Channing Tatum has cooler shoes than you do.

• As was rumoured previously, but has now finally been officially confirmed, the late Paul Walker’s brothers, Cody and Caleb, will be used as doubles to allow director James Wan to finish shooting Fast & Furious 7, after Walker tragically died in a car accident last November. Walker and the rest of the cast/crew had been on a break in production at the time of his death, and had thus only shot a portion of his scenes. At the time it was believed that a lot of work still needed to be done, but based on this official statement from Universal, it seems that the bulk of the necessary scenes were already in the can.
  

  “Our family experienced an unthinkable shock in November. We had to take time to grieve Paul, the brother we love and lost, and to figure out if we should move on with our film.

  “We came together and all felt the only choice was to continue. We believe our fans want that, and we believe Paul would want that too. Paul had already shot his dramatic scenes and most of his action for Fast & Furious 7, and it’s among the strongest work of his career.

  “We have resumed shooting and now welcome Paul’s brothers, Caleb and Cody, into our Fast family. Caleb and Cody are helping us complete some remaining action for their brother and fill in small gaps left in production. Having them on set has made us all feel that Paul is with us too.

  “We are just under a year away from the release of Fast & Furious 7, and this film is the most important we’ve ever done together. It will allow the character of Brian O’Conner to live on and let us celebrate Paul in his most defining role.”

• There are a lot of people that just didn’t believe that all the outlandish debauchery found in Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of New York stock broker Jordan Belfort’s life, but the fact is that most of it is the honest truth. Honest just like this f—ing hilarious f—ing new Honest f—ing Trailer for the f—ing film.

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 16, 2014