Extras! Tony Jaa has a fast & furious workout, Queen wants Q, Leo DiCaprio likes blood on snow, Where Agents of SHIELD fits in, and Did Bruce Campbell just confirm Army of Darkness 2?! Plus much more!

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!

While there are many criticisms that can be levelled at The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – deviating from the source, overabundance of songs about washing up – you would have to be one serious picker of nits and/or have no friends to say anything bad about the film’s gorgeous visual effects. And now you can have a look behind the scenes at how some of those effects got put together.

Looks like Skyfall actor Ben Whishaw may go from playing one British icon to another. Wishaw, who recently played a younger version of famous gadget man Q in James Bond’s latest, is apparently the frontrunner to play Freddie Mercury in an as-of-yet untitled biopic. At least that’s according to Queen drummer Roger Taylor.

Over at Classic Rock Magazine, Taylor’s bandmate, guitarist Brian May, finally shed some light on why Wishaw’s potential Mercurial predecessor, Sacha Baron Cohen, was ousted from the role. It had previously been reported- even by us – that the Ali G actor had split due to “creative differences”, with him wanting to take a no holds barred approach to Mercury’s life, while the band wanted something a bit more family friendly, but according to May though, that wasn’t the case. Kind of.

“What led us to that conclusion was the last three movies that [Baron Cohen has] made – The Dictator, Les Miserables and Hugo – in which he makes outstanding performances, but they’re very much Sacha Baron Cohen performances. And we thought there has to be no distraction in the Freddie movie. You have to really suspend that disbelief – the man who plays Freddie, you have to really believe is Freddie. And we didn’t that could really happen with Sacha.”

“”We’re very protective [of Freddie] and we’re known for not hiding away from the truth. There’s not going to be any pretense about this. It’s going to be something very true – as true as we can make it – but also respectful to Freddie as a performer and as a man.”

A couple of new international posters for Keanu Reeves’ samurai epic, 47 Ronin, has been released. And no, that is still not a sentence I’ve gotten used to typing.

Contrary to popular belief, Australia actually has more to offer than fauna and flora whose sole purpose is to end any and all human life around it. Some of the biggest actors in Hollywood come from the land down under (under what is still up for debate), and three of them, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce, will be teaming up for a new mystery drama called Strangerland.

The film is directed by Kim Farrant and follows a “couple whose lives unravel after their two teenage children go missing in the harsh Australian desert.”

A short while back we heard the news that James Bond’s Lotus submarine car from The Spy Who Loved Me, my personal favourite of all the Bond cars, was up for auction. I would have tried my hand at acquiring it, if it wasn’t for whole “having no money” thing. That wasn’t the case for a mystery bidder though who bought the car for $866 000 in September. And its been revealed that the mystery man was none other than locally born CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk. And even better, he now wants to make more of them for real.

As if Vin Diesel wasn’t badass enough, he’s apparently now being taught some new, badass-er ways to break people by his Fast & Furious 7 co-star, martial arts superstar Tony Jaa, as can be seen in this new combat training video Diesel posted to Facebook. Also, I imagine that when Jaa does that kick in the video – trust me, you’ll know it when you see it – what he shouts before is actually Thai for “F@#k you, gravity!”

While the debates still rage about whether people like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or not, it seems that instead of asking “Is it good/bad?”, we should have been asking “When is it exactly?”. You see, in case you didn’t notice, Iron Man 3, the first of Marvel’s Phase 3 movies, clearly took place 2 years after the events of The Avengers, but no such timeline has been given to indicate when S.H.I.E.L.D. takes place. Screenrant managed to corner Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and ask him when we’ll get some answers on this, and he indicated that everything will be explained before Captain America: The Winter Soldier hits theatres next year April.

What that explanation may entail is that SHIELD actually exists during that two year gap, and eventually something is going to happen that drives them underground, hence why they were pretty much non-existent in Iron Man 3 – as many disgruntled fans pointed out, and which Feige said would eventually be explained – and they can’t be seen in a single scrap of footage in Thor: The Dark World.

Seems like Coulson’s resurrection is not the only secret the show is keeping for now.

This hilarious comic strip from artist Israel Espinoza achieves it’s hilarity because it could be true. Which is really not that hilarious, once I think about it.

If there’s one rule in life you should always adhere to, it’s don’t eat yellow snowcones. The same applies for red ones, which there should be plenty of if Leonardo DiCaprio has anything to say about it. Warner Bros has apparently signed a very lucrative deal – rumoured in the region of up to $2 million – for the film rights to The Snowman author Jo Nesbo’s latest novel, Blood on Snow, which was written under the pseudonym Tom Johansen. WB has partnered up with DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions to produce an adaptation of the crime thriller about “a hit man who is asked by his boss to kill the man’s wife, [but then] he falls in love with her and things get messy from there,” with DiCaprio also looking to star.

Although the story does sound about generic, I’m hoping that this film becomes a big enough success for WB to adapt the follow-up novel – the rights to which is included in the deal – simply so that I can see its ridiculous title up in lights: Blood on Snow 2: More Blood.

Normally when I post links to interesting articles here, I want you to click them, but this one’s different. Well, you can still click it, but just bookmark it for now instead of reading it. That is, unless you couldn’t give a hoot about spoilers, as it lists the 10 Differences Between Brian De Palma’s Original Carrie and the New Remake.

Brett Ratner’s Hercules has finally wrapped production, which means no more photos from Dwayne Johnson to add to the pile of about 278 he already posted. Okay, make that 279, as he’s posted his final sepia toned shot, showing himself as the titular demigod, riding his chariot.

My strongest THANK YOU to all who worked to create an epic film. Proud of you all. #ThatsAWrap #HERCULESMovie

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) October 19, 2013

There has been lots of talk over the last year or so about a sequel to Sam Raimi’s horror-comedy classic Army of Darkness, but most of that talk has been of the vague variety. Bruce Campbell, who starred in the classic films as chainsaw-handed, shotgun wielding Ash, may just have given the first real confirmation that the sequel is actually going to happen. He was slumming it at the Wizard World convention in Nashville, when he was asked about the possibility of doing another film. He started off, as usual, by joking about it.

“The last one was twenty-two years ago. I just haven’t been racing to do it. Sam Raimi is just a little bit busy making the biggest movies in Hollywood. I use to be busy. Now I’m not. That’s why I’m here.”

“Ash would have to stop occasionally from chasing some deadite to catch his breath. Maybe we could do that, I guess. That would be exciting. Fight in a walker. That would be alright. Hit them with my cane. Fake them out, have a fake heart attack, distract a zombie. I like it.’

Then, Campbell suddenly got serious and added:

“Alright sir, the answer is yes.’

Groovy.

Did you know that Hobbiton, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ little village in The Lord of the Rings is a real place? Stop laughing, Darryn, it’s true. Just ask Frodo himself!

Last Updated: October 22, 2013