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 make no secret around here of the fact that we have a serious man crush on Doctor Who. The incredible British sci-fi series just recently wrapped up its seventh season with a cliffhanger so incredible that I was expecting Sylvester Stallone to be battling John Lithgow on it. And while we have to wait until November to have more light shed on that story, BBC have released a new video addendum, titled Clarence and the Whisper Men, that elaborates on one of the finale’s other plot points.
We’ve mentioned the aborted Gladiator 2 script a few times already around here, just for its sheer ridiculousness. You may have remembered that Russell Crowe’s Maximus died in the first movie, so how could there be a sequel? Well according to the script that writer Nick Cave and director Ridley Scott was working on, we’d follow Maximus into the afterlife, where he’d battle gods to claim his immortality and then live on to become a US general working in the Pentagon. Seriously.
Luckily, somebody changed out Cave and Scott’s medication and they scrapped the idea, but now that entire script can be found online for your reading (dis)pleasure.
Damn you, Transformers 4! You tricked me again! Yahoo has unveiled the first look at some new Autobots to found in the Michael Bay’s upcoming sequel, but instead of showing them in their humanoid form, we get colourful cars. Now a $2.4 million Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse and Chevrolet C7 Corvette is certainly nothing to scoff at, but we want giant robots, damn it!
Staying with Transformers 4, comedian TJ Miller has been reportedly been added to the cast. Maybe now when I laugh at a Transformers movie, it will not be unintentional humour.
Despite his kooky religious beliefs, there’s no denying Tom Cruise’s star power. So when Cruise drops out of a high profile gig, like the lead in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. remake, would could you possibly get as a worthy replacement? Superman, of course! Man of Steel star Henry Cavill is apparently eyeing that now vacant lead role opposite Armie Hammer in the espionage thriller, and it looks like Warner Bros might just give it to him.
Four new banners out for World War Z, the big budget adaptation of the title (and just about only the title) of Max Brooks’ acclaimed zombie apocalypse novel.
He’s already had to fight off zombies (well, bad meat, actually) over on Community, but now actor Joel McHale will have to contend with some real supernatural nasties. McHale has joined Eric Bana in the Scott “Exorcism of Emily Rose“ Derrickson directed Beware the Night, which will see Bana’s religious street cop being targeted by a soldier possessed by the devil. McHale will play Bana’s police partner.
The internet is filled with trolls and soon your cinema screen will be too. Mike Mitchell (Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigilo, Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked) has signed to direct Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls, an animated feature film based on the popular wild-haired toys. Emmy Award winning TV writer Erica Rivinoja (South Park, Up All Night) will be penning the screenplay, while Nicky Minaj will be providing her likeness as well as doing all the motion capture for the trolls.
That last bit may/may not be true.
A couple of new Pacific Rim images have just dropped once again forcing us to have to replace our keyboards due to uncontrollable drool. Director Guillermo Del Toro also shared some info on where he found the inspiration for these crazy monster vs mech battles.
In creating Pacific Rim, I wanted the fights to have structure, like the wrestling matches of my childhood, so each fight brings a very different kind of aesthetic and a different dynamic. The first fight is very operatic, theatrical: Wagnerian. It happens in the middle of an iceberg-strewn sea, in the middle of a storm, with huge waves crashing on the Jaeger and Kaiju. We worked really hard at making water a character in this movie, frequently referring to Hokusai or the Fuji wave, and trying to make the water enhanced and add to the drama. This fight tries to quote the majesty of a painting by Goya called the Colossus.
If one of the Kaiju comes out in a Luchiador mask and does a 619 on a Jaeger, then this would officially be the greatest movie ever known to man.
Despite how much studios were punting it, 3D has certainly not only lost its appeal but also acts as a deterrent to many a cinemagoer. And all of that began with the godawful post-conversion 3D (it looked like somebody had smeared poop on the camera lense) on Louis Letterier’s Clash of the Titans. Everybody hated that film’s 3D, including Louis Letterier, it seems. While talking to HuffPost in a brilliant interview that I encourage everybody to read, he shared his experience on working on the murky mythological movie.
“It was a very tough experience. I was literally thrown under the bus…but at one point it was like, ‘Yeah, Louis chose the 3D.’ And I was like, ‘No, guys, I didn’t choose the 3D. I actually told you it’s not working. I couldn’t control it. I said don’t do it.’”
“It was famously rushed and famously horrible. It was absolutely horrible, the 3D. Nothing was working, it was just a gimmick to steal money from the audience. I’m a good boy and I rolled with the punches and everything, but it’s not my movie. Clash of the Titans is not my movie. And ultimately that’s why I didn’t do the sequel.”
“I tried to do the best I could, but it was not the best experience of my life, I must say. I wasn’t protected. Talking about surrounding yourself with the right people — I felt like I was really thrown at the wolves.”
He also mentions in the interview that for Incredible Hulk, he actually wanted Mark Ruffalo in the role of Bruce Banner, but Marvel overruled him and forced him to get Edward Norton, due to Norton’s bigger box office draw potential. Norton then famously bumped heads with both the director and Marvel (eventually deciding to edit the movie himself), forcing the studio to give him the boot and recast – yep, you guessed it – with Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers.
And our Super-education continues! Yesterday we learned what happens when Superman kicks somebody in the jewels, and today we learn all about Superbeards! See Conan O’Brien noticed that in the Man of Steel trailers, Superman goes from bearded to clean shaven, but exactly how was he able to cut those super follicles?
Luckily for Conan, there are a whole bunch of people who are willing to help him work out this great conundrum.
Last Updated: May 29, 2013
