Home Entertainment Extras! Avengers (maybe) in Cape Town, Mandela has a long walk to a poster, Antonio Banderas digs the 33, Scarlett Johannson directs Capote, Avengers 2's quick and witchy characters confirmed and Gerard Butler thinks that's so raven! Plus much more!

Extras! Avengers (maybe) in Cape Town, Mandela has a long walk to a poster, Antonio Banderas digs the 33, Scarlett Johannson directs Capote, Avengers 2's quick and witchy characters confirmed and Gerard Butler thinks that's so raven! Plus much more!

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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!

We start off today with a couple of leggy birds, dancing to some samba beats. Unfortunately, it is not at all as exciting/titilating as that sounds. See, there seems to be a pattern when it comes to teaser trailers for animated movie sequels: Don’t show a damn thing about the movie, rather just have your characters do something cute and throw up the title. And clearly Rio 2 is not going to be the one to mix things up, as they just confirm that yes, the sequel will have birds, and there will be music.

Seems that Scarlett Johannson is out to prove that she’s more than just cleavage in a leather catsuit, as the young actress will be making her directorial debut by adapting Truman Caopte’s previously unpublished first novel, Summer CrossingCapote wrote the novel, about a summer time romance between a 17-year old socialite and a Jewish parking attendant, some time in the 1940’s, but then threw it away. But a copy of the manuscript surfaced in 2004 when it was revealed that a housekeeper had rescued it from the trash. The story was eventually published posthumously in 2006, when it apparently really grabbed Johannson’s attention.

“Several years ago I began working alongside the Capote estate and writer Tristine Skylar to adapt Summer Crossing, an inspired early work of Truman’s which has long captured my heart. Being able to bring this story to the screen as my full-length directorial debut is a life dream and deep privilege.”

I have made no secret of the fact that I have a man-crush on Alfonso Cuaron. Well, his film’s to be exact, but the point is that I am obsessed with anything the man makes. Which  is why I spent a nice part of today reading this fully released script the pilot episode of the new JJ Abrams produced TV series, Believe, which Cuaron has both written and directed.

Idris Elba may be spending his time lately cancelling apocalypses but soon he’s also be seen cancelling apartheid, as steps into the very famous shirts of Tata Madiba, Nelson Mandela, in the biopic Long Walk to Freedom. We’ve yet to see really see anything from the film, but now we can get our first look at Elba (though a little jaundiced) in the role thanks to this newly released poster.

Long_Walk_of_Freedom_1

Now that Gerard Butler has successfully defended the White House by KILLING ALL DA KOREANS! and earning a whole lot dollars, he’s back to being highly sought after. Even by the military apparently. The 300 star is in negotiations for the lead in Raven, an adaptation of Ricardo de Montreuil and Antonio Perez’s short film of the same name, that followed “a man with remarkable powers who is being chased by the government and the military who both want those powers working for them.”

Montreuil is set to direct while Michael Gilio has adapted the screenplay for the big screen. Liam Hemsworth was previously attached to the role, but it would seem that Butler has kicked him down a hole while screaming something about pasta.

While some feel that Iron Man 3’s final battle may leave them all armoured out, there’s no denying the amazing thrills and spills of the films’ mansion attack scene. That was writer-director Shane Black at his action movie best, right? Except that wasn’t really Shane Black. Not just him, at least.

Storyboard artist Federico D’Alessandro actually created the sequence long before any cameras began rolling, and Black and co were so impressed with it, that they adapted it almost beat for beat. Here’s D’Alessandro explaining how he came up with it, as well as the original pre-vis animatic that he created to show it off.

“Creating this animatic was a technically challenging process as I was trying a lot of new techniques not normally found in animatics. The storytelling had to be tight, the energy frenetic, and the action clear. One of the things I focused on was a “good news, bad news” stacking of the beats…Tony gets out of a bind, only to be faced with another challenge which he overcomes but then he is immediately dealt a fresh problem. As much as anything else, Tony needed to outthink his attackers.”

Antonio Banderas is going to be Super Mario! Okay, calm down, calm down. They’re not going to make another Mario Bros movie (20 years later and the wounds are still too raw), but rather Banderas will playing the part of Mario “Super Mario” Sepulveda, the charismatic leader of a group of Chilean miners who in 2010 found themselves trapped underground for 69 days following a mining disaster, in The 33, a new feature film adaptation of the event that grabbed the world’s attention at the time.

Banderas is joining the already cast Martin Sheen and Rodrigo Santoro in the true story drama, which will be directed by Patricia Riggen (La Misma Luna).

Controversial auteur Lars Von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac, has finally got a release date of Christmas Day, 2013. Because nothing says “yuletide cheer” quite like a movie about a woman’s entire sordid sex life being put on explicit (and apparently hardcore, non-simulated) display for the whole world to see.  Along with the announcement, this new pic has also been released, which shows the entire cast just innocently standing/laying around. Innocently. In a totally non-suggestive way. At all.

(Click to enlarge)

nymphomaniaclarge

In a bit of surprising news, it would seem that Joss Whedon is getting really gabby about The Avengers 2. After merely teasing their involvement – which is where I thought it would stop – the fan favourite writer-director has confirmed that mutant siblings Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will indeed be in the superhero sequel.

Now if only Whedon could get as talkative about shooting in Cape Town. Oh, wait. You don’t know about that yet…

How’s this for a bit of news to make you Joburgers jealous of us Capetonians? Not only do we have the mountain, but we may soon also have the Avengers!

Anant Singh, the chairman of Cape Town’s film studios, was featured in a bulletin on the Cape Town radio station 5FM and his big reveal was that Marvel Studios have been in touch and are interested in filming some of the next Avengers film in the area. by Brendon Connelly

It wasn’t entirely clear if this meant in the Cape Town studio facilities or on location, but I’d be very surprised if it isn’t the latter.

We have been expecting Black Panther to be involved – it certainly looks like casting is underway – and Singh’s comments would seem to translate into yet more evidence.

T’Challa, the Black Panther, comes from the nation of Wakanda but, well, there’s no real Wakanda to go film in, for one thing, and what’s more, South Africa has regularly been part of his stories.

Darryn, Justin and I are already busy on Twitter working on a Cape Town centric story idea to pitch to Marvel. It involves food.

Trailers lie. This is a fact. Quite often, with just the right bit of tweaking, trailers can be made to look a bijillion times better than the actual finished film. Just ask Michael Bay, he’s made a career out of it. And just to prove just how deceiving trailers can be, check out this fan-edited trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man, titled Parker: The Untold Story, to see a completely different movie than the one we saw. For one thing, I certainly don’t remember seeing Peter Parker getting into a relationship with Dr Curt “The Lizard” Connors.

Last Updated: May 20, 2013

3 Comments

  1. Lourens Corleone

    May 20, 2013 at 16:47

    Cool, can the Avengers all sit around a table at Mariam’s at the end of the film, eating a gatsby in silence?

    Reply

  2. Justin Hess

    May 20, 2013 at 16:51

    If only I lived in a world where that Avengers/ Cape Town story had a more than 20 percent chance of coming true. Sadly though, my excitement is tempered by the rumours I’d heard of Sam Mendes even coming to Cape Town to scout locations for Skyfall. And then they went with Turkey.

    Also, Whedon has yet to reply to my tweet enquiring about a potential Cape Town shoot. Though that might be neither here nor there. Or the fact that he ignores my tweets.

    Also, world we live in, it’s likely that they’ll shoot in China. Even the bits set in Africa

    Reply

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