Home Entertainment Extras! Ryan Reynolds is RIPD, Lucas Till gets Satanic, Poster for Baytown Outlaws makes Billy Bob Thornton 10 years younger, Russell Crowe helped Hugh Jackman become Wolverine and David Cronenberg was once asked to direct Return of the Jedi?! Plus much more!

Extras! Ryan Reynolds is RIPD, Lucas Till gets Satanic, Poster for Baytown Outlaws makes Billy Bob Thornton 10 years younger, Russell Crowe helped Hugh Jackman become Wolverine and David Cronenberg was once asked to direct Return of the Jedi?! 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!

I rip Twilight off a lot. Like, a lot. And for this I sometimes get quite a bit of flak from the Twihards for sullying their beloved books/films/characters. Well, as a rebuttal I would like to offer this supercut of Twilight star, Robert Pattinson, discussing the series.

Checkmate, Twihards. Your move.

If you find yourself with me down here in Cape Town on Thurday, 29 November, then you may want to click this link ASAP. Ster Kinekor is having a special advanced screening of highly anticipated sci-fi film Looper. The film will be introduced and there will be a discussion afterwards. Director Rian Johnson’s film about time travelling hitmen starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has already garnered quite a bit of praise internationally, so you definitely don’t want to miss this. Tickets are selling fast though.

Seems like every other day, some rumour about who’s going to direct the new Star Wars movie pops up. Luckily it’s easy to dismiss a lot of them, due to how highly unlikely the choices are (Quentin Tarantino? Really?). But maybe there’s method to the madness with these unconventional choices, as the franchise has previously been offered to the strangest of choices in David Cronenberg. Speaking to Digital Spy, the director – most known for his freaky and twisted movies – explains how he was once asked to direct Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

“A long time ago I was approached for one second to do a Star Wars movie, which at that time was called Revenge Of The Jedi and then became Return Of The Jedi. I was approached by Lucasfilm about that and it didn’t take them long to realize that maybe that wasn’t a good idea.”

“You’re really restricted by the format that’s been established. So for a really inventive or innovative director, that’s being put in a straitjacket. And the visual style has been established and the characters have been cast – I mean, you’re not involved in casting the leads, which is of course, for a director, a hugely important thing.”

Yeah, I don’t think Lucas would have sold many “Han Solo with a blaster rifle smuggled in his stomach vagina” action figures.

Somehow this slipped through the cracks last week, but THR’s Borys Kit offered this update on the story that Lucasfilm and Disney were perhaps looking at bringing on original Star Wars writer Lawrence Kasdan and X-Men writer and producer Simon Kinberg to pen Episodes VIII and IX.

@Borys_Kit: “Here’s what I’m hearing on the Star Wars writers: not courting but that deals are closed. And they will also be producers.#StarWars

Thanks to some on-set snaps, we’ve managed to get our first looks at Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges and Mary-Louise Parker in RIPD. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a biopic about Darryn’s underpants but rather an adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book  mini-series about a group of dead “law enforcement officers” who have to ensure that the recently deceased actually get to rest in peace (hence the name Rest In Peace Department).

Looks like serial penis flasher Shia Lebeouf won’t get the chance to work with his Lawless director, John Hillcoat, as soon as they’d hoped. The Beef was supposed to join Hillcoat for his next project, Triple Nine, an ensemble police thriller, but it looks like the madcap actor may be too busy making home made pornos for freaky Danish men to join after all.

“I don’t think it’s going to be with Shia after all his schedule thing, but it’s a huge ensemble, so it’s all in relation to balancing people’s dates so that is still being worked out actually. I do want to work with Shia again on something if this one doesn’t work out. and I’ve been offered to do this contemporary urban kind of thriller, so we’ll see. Ensembles are really tricky because of the balance of availability and schedules and all that.”

In spite of a mutant-powered suckfest of a solo movie, nobody can deny that Hugh Jackman has been rather fantastic in his role as Wolverine, the clawed canuck with the Don King hair. And if you’re a fan of Jackman’s rather (pun intended) uncanny portrayal of the mutant berserker, then you may have a certain Maximum Decimus Meridius to thank for that. According to Jackman, he would never have got the role if it wasn’t for fellow Australian actor Russell Crowe, who was actually offered the role first by X-Men director Bryan Singer.

“Bryan Singer asked [Crowe] to do Wolverine. And he said, ‘Nah, I’ve just done Gladiator, it’s not for me, but you should look at this guy…’”

Can you imagine what it would have been like if Crowe had accepted the role? Thrown phones would have been the least of his enemies’ concerns.

Holy photoshop, Batman! I haven’t seen Billy Bob Thornton in anything for a while, but based on this new poster for redneck action comedy The Baytown Outlaws he apparently he took some time off to discover the mythical Fountain of Youth.

The film will see him star as the ex-husband of Celeste (Eva Longoria), who shoots her thrice in the stomach before taking off with her godson. Classy. Naturally, Celeste then hires three redneck maniacs with far too much guns to go after him, but they just escalate matters into a “Southern battle royale.” I have no idea what a Southern battle royale actually is, but I have a feeling that it doesn’t involve jumping castles, balloon animals and a good day for all.

X-Men: First Class star Lucas Till has joined the cast of Satanic, which by the sound of it appears to be rather devoid of the ol’ cloven hoofed one. The film will instead see Haley Bennett (The Hole) as a college student, who becomes the target of a vicious gang, after she decides to remain alone on campus during Thanksgiving break. It’s unknown whether Till will be part of the vicious gang or not. And you probably also shouldn’t get your hopes up for some fire ‘n brimstone action.

As you may recall, The Hobbit was originally only supposed to be split into two movies, but then director Peter Jackson got a bit too busy behind the camera and ended with a whole dragon’s horde worth of unused footage. Enough footage, that with a little bit of tweaking here and there, the duology could get be turned into trilogy.

I hate it when people just drop by unexpectedly, so you can imagine that the cast and crew must have had their lives turned upside down a bit by this sudden inclusion of another film. Well, not really as Martin Freeman, who stars as the titular Bilbo Baggins, related to Total Film.

“It’s not really daunting. It is unexpected compared to where we were, but it’s the same thing of telling the story and doing your bit, whether it’s one or two or three films. There’s just, you know, more of it! But there are so many of us involved, it doesn’t really hang on anyone’s shoulders.”

Evil Dead is looking to buck the trend of horror remakes by promising to try out the simple tactic of not sucking. That promise is made a lot more believable by the fact that original star and director Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, have been heavily involved in the remake. Campbell spoke about how their involvement, so atypical in the case of most remakes, came about. And no, the answer was surprisingly not, “more money”. Well not all of the answer, I’m sure.

“He [remake director Fede Alvarez] pitched a full-length story and we really liked it. He wrote a script and we kept liking it. It sort of grew on us like a wart.

“Plus, when you see the chances of making a sequel receding every year, like our hairlines, you realise maybe we should get a new punk in here with five new kids to torment.

“We can use our experience to help guide the filmmaker to come up with a new balls-out movie that will torment people for the rest of their lives. We think he did it!”

And we’ve seen quite a few trailers for The Hobbit, with a number of them having the adjective of “epic” bestowed upon them. So do you improve on that? Well, simple really. Include another band pint sized heroes on a great adventure for treasure. Yes, that’s right, somebody has made a Goonies/The Hobbit mashup. Congratulations Internet. Despite all the tentacle porn, and men dressed as giant wolves, occasionally you really amaze me.

Last Updated: November 26, 2012

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