Home Entertainment Extras! Remake of the Dead, The Hobbit may be blocking The Butler, Walt Disney waves, The real Iron Throne, Johnny Depp wants Nazi gold, and Spider-Man wants MJ to be a guy?! Plus much more!

Extras! Remake of the Dead, The Hobbit may be blocking The Butler, Walt Disney waves, The real Iron Throne, Johnny Depp wants Nazi gold, and Spider-Man wants MJ to be a guy?! 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!

Attention! Attention! Class is now in session! And in today’s Film School 101, we learn all about MacGuffins. No, Darryn, those are not new breakfast menu items from McDonalds. Alfred Hitchcock was not only a master at making use of the plot device, but was largely responsible for popularizing it, and back in 1972 he explained exactly what it is and how it’s employed. But 42 years is a long time, and with a whole new generation of filmgoers around, it’s time to educate them once more. This time with animations!

Clearly Johnny Depp is not spending his days crying the crow off his head because of The Lone Ranger‘s lack of critical and box office success. The actor is already busy with a couple of projects and looking to add another gig: reuniting with his Secret Window writer/director David Koepp for the globe trotting crime caper Mortdecai. Based on the awesomely title book, ‘The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery’ by Kyril Bonfiglioli, it will see Depp as the roguish art dealer, Charles Mortdecai, who has to go up against covert intelligence agencies, Russians gangsters, an angry terrorist and even his femme fatale wife, as he “traverses the globe armed only with his good looks and special charm in a race to recover a stolen painting rumored to contain the code to a lost bank account filled with Nazi gold.”

I’m hazarding a guess that the painting is one of those optical illusion 3D pics that actually just contains a schooner/sailboat.

If you have a thing for both grizzled Mexicans who look like they wash their faces with gravel, and hot, eye-patch wearing ladies showing off some skin, then, well, you have some really diverse tastes. Also, you’re totally in luck, because this image from Machete Kills features Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez fitting that exact description.

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So remember how Lee Daniels and The Weinstein Company were currently engaged in a bit of legal wrangle with Warner Bros over Daniel’s soon to be released film The Butler? WB are trying to prevent the use of the title, claiming they hold the rights due to them releasing a little known 1916 silent movie of the same name. It was thought by some that this may be some sort of petty revenge tactic due to TWC initiating and then reneging on a similar legal action a while back. Turns out though, it’s all about that classic motive: money. Specifically Hobbit money. TWC’s Harvey Weinstein currently owns a 2.5% stake in the film rights for JRR Tolkien’s famed literary creation that he snapped up years ago. But 2.5% of a now billion dollar franchise is a whole lot to be fighting for, even if this is totally absurd, as Weinstein explained to CBS (via Indiewire).

“We did try to settle it. I went through this with ‘Bully’ and I’ve gone through this all my life. My dad taught me to fight injustice. This is unjust. This movie is coming out August 16. I was asked by two execs at Warner Brothers, which I’m happy testify to, that if I gave them back the rights to ‘The Hobbit’ they would drop the claim. For a 1916 short? This was used as a bullying tactic.”

“…122 times in the history of movies, titles have been used and repeated and our understanding with them was that this was just going to be the simple process that it always is. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy have a movie out called ‘[The] Heat.’ Jason Statham is shooting a movie called ‘Heat.’ Bob DeNiro and Al Pacino made a movie called ‘Heat’ and ten years before that Burt Reynolds made a movie called ‘Heat. And ‘Unstoppable’ has been done 5 times. 122 instances.  [Warner Bros] told us they were going to do the normal thing, the normal business they practice and I think there’s an ulterior motive.”

I love making fun of James Franco. And apparently so do lots of other people, as it’s been announced that the actor/writer/director/poet/short story writer/awards show destroyer star will be the next celeb in the hot seat for Comedy Central’s Roast. CC’s President of Content Development & Original Programming, Kent Alterman, had this to say about the choice:

“If only James Franco was a more successful, multi-hyphenated, incessant creative risk taker in different media, he’d be the perfect person to roast. Oh well… I suppose we’ll just have to make do.”

So you know that “Iron Throne” that Joffrey, the King everybody loves to hate/slap, parks his smug behind on in HBO’s Game of Thrones? Yeah, well that’s not really an Iron Throne. This, is an Iron Throne.

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French artist Marc Simonetti created this image based on a recent blog post by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, detailing how the uber-popular and critically acclaimed show actually got this bit wrong.

“It’s a throne made by blacksmiths hammering together half-melted, broken, twisted swords, wrenched from the hands of dead men or yielded up by defeated foe.”

“The HBO throne has become iconic. And well it might. It’s a terrific design, and it has served the show very well…everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves.And yet, and yet… it’s still not right. It’s not the Iron Throne I see when I’m working on (the forthcoming sixth Game of Thrones novel) The Winds of Winter. It’s not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books… HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court… my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and asymmetric…

The HBO throne is none of those things.”

Here’s the first look at Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson as Walt Disney and P.L. Travers – author of the original Mary Poppins books – in this first image for Saving Mr. Banks, the true story of the fourteen years long effort from Disney to convince Travers to grant him the film rights to her literary creation. And apparently also about her great disdain for waving.

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And earlier today we showed you a “shocking” new image from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but that was really just some not-so-clever wordplay. Star Andrew Garfield though, is really trying to ruffle some feathers. Now that Shailene Woodley’s role as Spidey love Mary Jane Watson appears to have been cut from the movie, Garfield has a few ideas about how they can reintroduce the character. A few very unexpected ideas.

“‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”

Not even giving time for the Spider-Man purists to utter an “Oh my”, Garfield, who said that he’s “kind of joking, but kind of not joking,” continued with a suggestion for who he thinks should be Peter Parker’s new flame if it had to be a boy.

“I’ve been obsessed with Michael B. Jordan since The Wire. He’s so charismatic and talented. It’d be even better—we’d have interracial bisexuality!”

I’m really confused. Didn’t they already try this? I mean Shailene Woodley is a boy, right?*

Hey, guys! Apparently we’ve all been given “Level 7 Access”, which I think now entitles us to snoop on our neighbour’s hot wife with with a zoom lense camera while she showers with completely legal impunity. Either that or we get to check out this new clip from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. introducing us to Agent Grant Ward. I always get the two confused.

Texas Chainsaw 3D producers Lati Grobman and Christa Campbell have apparently picked up the rights to George Romero’s classic zombie film, Day of The Dead, and plan to do a remake of it. Because clearly the rather crummy 2008 remake wasn’t enough.

“Zombie movies are really popular right now, and we feel we could do this right… We want to keep it as close to the Romero version as possible to make sure that his fans are happy. These are not going to be zombies climbing walls and doing back flips like in ‘World War Z.'”

You know what would really make Romero fans happy? Not remaking Day of the Dead.

I love film studio intros. I know that this makes sound like a super film nerd, but I do. And face it, you do too. But have we ever given any thought to what’s really happening with these intros? Youtube FatAwesome has, and has made this hilarious (and slightly NSFW for strong language) clip about it.

*Before you get offended, this is just a bad joke. I know perfectly well that Shailene is girl. A girl with a suspiciously thick neck.

Last Updated: July 11, 2013

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