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!
Much like Darryn possesses a Michael Bay shrine, I worship at the Church of Cuaron. Alfonso Cuaron, that is. I have been eagerly waiting for Gravity, the next film from the master of the single-take shot, which will see Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in space, and which reportedly features a mind boggling 20 minute long uninterrupted opening shot.
Early buzz for the film was incredible, and the first trailer should be out shortly, but until then I’m going to have to sate my Cuaron craving with these brief snippets of footage courtesy of ET. No, not that ET.
Right, so how do I word this without getting my head chewed off by the spoiler-phobes? A while back, a story appeared that spoiled the ending of Fast & Furious 6 by revealing a plot twist related to all of the Justin Lin directed entries in the franchise. It seems that… someone actually links all these movies together, and that said someone would be the main baddie for Fast & Furious 7. Well thanks to Michelle Rodriguez’s blabbermouth, that someone has now been confirmed. That link obviously contains spoilers so click at your own peril.
Do you have some free time on your hands? Well clearly you don’t have as much free time as Rich-K and Big-J who built a 150 000 piece LEGO recreation of “The Battle of Helm’s Deep” from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It uses 1 700 custom made mini-figures and holy hell, it’s only “about 90% completed”.
LEGO does make an official Helm’s Deep set, by the way. It consists of 1 386 pieces. Amateurs.
Well, nobody can ever accuse Kevin Feige of being catty to the competition. While most people would simply start doing impersonations of Nelson from The Simpson (“Ha haa!”), the Marvel Studios President of Production has some advice to offer Warner Bros on how to get their DC Comics properties, specifically their Avengers analogue, The Justice League, to the big screen successfully.
“I’m sure they have smart people over there who have a plan and know what they’re doing. Man of Steel looks like it’s going to be awesome and obviously Dark Knight is awesome. I don’t know. It’s what I say all the time and have said over the years, which is, have confidence in the characters, believe in the source material, don’t be afraid to stay true to all of the elements of the characters no matter how seemingly silly or crazy they are.”
“I don’t know, I think the Marvel characters have a bit of a leg up for all the reasons that Marvel fans are aware of in terms of the emotional complexity of the characters and the flawed nature of the characters. Those are obviously the elements we want to accentuate amongst all the action.”
“I think there have been a lot of great DC stories and there are a lot of great DC characters, and if they focus on those things the audience will be interested,”
He then went onto to admit that there’s a good reason why he wants to see DC’s superhero team-up succeed: They did it first.
“It was a very unique model that we were lucky enough to be able to do — introducing each individual hero before introducing The Avengers. That, to me, is what was always interesting about The Avengers. … The Avengers was cool because they were preexisting characters that teamed up for a big event. I think that’s why Justice League was cool, Justice League was first. That’s what they did first in comic form.”
What Feige forgot to mention there, is of course the most important piece of advice: Cast Robert Downey Jr. He has become the face of the franchise, but has recently indicated that he may be looking to hang up the rocket boots now that his contract obligations have been met, much to fans’ dismay. Then his co-star and on-screen flame Gwyneth Paltrow fueled the retirement fires when she said that there would be no Iron Man 4.
We all took a sigh of relief though when we heard that Downey Jr has begun contract renegotiations, but it turns out we may have breathed too soon. Looks like while RDJ is indeed negotiating deals for appearances in The Avengers 2 & 3, there’s zero mention of Iron Man 4.
Say what you want about Megan Fox’s casting as April O’Neil in Ninja Turtles, at least you know this is going to be one fit and good looking (toethumb be damned!) reporter, if these new set pics are any indication.
So you know that Great Gatsby movie coming out? Yeah, it may not be so great after all if the early reviews are to be believed.
When it comes to movie technologies, there are few things I dislike as much as 3D. Post-converted 3D is definitely one of them. But apparently there will no after shooting shenanigans for everybody’s favourite time-hopping mutants though, as X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer has revealed when he tweeted this new behind the scenes pic.
“Shooting native 3D and Simul-cam. Looks like friggin mission control.”
So I know that there have been many nerd wars (keyboards were massacred, points were made with wanton punctuation!) about who is a better Spock, the original Leonard Nimoy or the newcomer Zachary Quinto. This is something that even the men themselves have wondered. And apparently, so has Audi.
Nobody’s ever going to accuse G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra of having an incredible story, but apparently there was enough there to steal. That’s according to screenwriters David Elliot and Paul Lovett who are suing MGM, Paramount and Di Bonaventura Pictures to the tune of $23 million. The writers, who were credited on the original film but not its sequel, say that ideas/concepts/story beats that they had pitched for a followup film were used in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, but that they were not acknowledged with a different team of writers credited for the entire screenplay.
I have no idea how this slipped through the cracks, but at the Emerald City Comic Con back in March, a group of the most well known voice actors (Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell and Rob Paulsen) got together to do a reading of STar Wars unlike anything you have ever heard.
The LULZ is strong with this one!
Last Updated: May 8, 2013
