Home Entertainment Extras! Vin Diesel dances, Fox chooses its own adventure, Mother Teresa biopic on the way, Sausage Party finds its cast, and Loki was Thor?! Plus much more!

Extras! Vin Diesel dances, Fox chooses its own adventure, Mother Teresa biopic on the way, Sausage Party finds its cast, and Loki was Thor?! 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!

Isn’t always the case, you design some sweet user interfaces for some spaceships in one of the biggest movie franchises in history, but all anybody can talk about is the annoying kid and his goofy alien sidekick? Well, it was the case for Noel Rubin who designed the ship/vehicle HUD’s on Star Wars: Episode I and III. You may not have noticed his work when you first saw the movies as you were too busy screaming “DIE, JAR JAR! DIE!” at the screen, but thanks to this compilation video, you can check out all the coolness.

Looks like Hollywood is indeed intent on pillaging all of my childhood. 20th Century Fox have apparently closed a deal to produce a feature film inspired by 80’s book line, Choose Your Own Adventure. Just how they will adapt a series of books whose entire hook was that they each had a bunch of different endings, all determined by the decisions the reader made to read certain portions of the story over others, is a massive mystery to me, but that task has apparently been given to the writing duo of Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon (Reno 911, Night at the Museum series, Naked Gun reboot) and director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, We’re the Millers).

Seeing as how the 180 plus books in the series dipped into just about every genre imaginable, there’s just no telling in which direction they will take the story, but judging from these guys’ credentials it should at least be good for some laughs.

Juno and Up In the Air director Jason Reitman has some possibilities ahead of him. Literally. Reitman has been tapped to direct an adaptation of Possibilities, the upcoming novel from The Descendents author Kaui Hart Hemmings. The book, which hits shelves on May 13, is described as being “set in a Colorado ski town, the story follows a grieving mother struggling to overcome her son’s death. She’s visited by a strange girl with a secret that will change them both.”

Now I know that I may have dozed off several times in Sunday School, but I’m pretty sure that Noah was never an axe-wielding badass Viking-lookalike. I mean, I would definitely have remembered that, right? But this new poster for Darren Aronofsky’s Noah suggests differently.

Noah_6

Hotel Rwanda and Chavez screenwriter Keir Pearson has been picked to pen an upcoming biopic focusing on vaunted humanitarian Mother Teresa. It will be titled I Thirst (and no, that doesn’t mean that this is some kind of spin-off to I, Frankenstein, no matter the fanfic potential) and “will focus on Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta during the 1950s when she founded the Missionaries of Charity after hearing a call from the Lord to begin ministering to the poorest of India’s poor. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and by the time of her death in 1997, the order had grown to more than 4,000 sisters running orphanages, hospices and charity centers.”

No actors or directors have been picked yet, but producers are “hoping that the project will attract a top-line director and actress and that shooting can take place in Calcutta later this year.”

Johnny Depp is going to receive an award for wearing makeup. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Tom Hiddleston may be the best thing going in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with his performances as Loki, but things could have been very different – and very blonder – if Hiddleston had had his way. The English actor apparently first auditioned for the role of his eventual cinematic brother, Thor, and not the villainous Loki. Now some footage of a bleached and topless Hiddleston’s screen test for the role has finally surfaced online.

Tom-Hiddleston-Thor-Audition-2

Tom-Hiddleston-Thor-audition-1

That dude sure knows how to throw a hammer.

Last week, Paramount announced that going forward, all it’s film will shot and released digitally and no longer on film. With many filmmakers speaking out against the loss of the film format, this should upset a few of them. Unless they happen to be Chris Nolan, that is, as Paramount have revealed that they will be making an exception to their new all-digital rule for Nolan’s upcoming sci-fi flick Interstellar. I’m guessing that having directed a billion dollar franchise must definitely come in handy around the negotiation table.

If you enjoyed the stoned, apocalyptic insanity of This Is the End – and really, that should be all of you – then chances are you’re game for Sausage Party. No, not that kind of sausage party. I’m talking about the upcoming R-rated animated feature film that has just confirmed its voice cast, which will be led by Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and David Krumholtz, while Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton and Nick Kroll will voice supporting roles.

Rogen and regular writing partner Evan Goldberg penned the script while Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Greg Tiernan will be directing the raunchy comedy, which is now sporting one hell of a voice cast with some serious comedic potential. The film is said to follow “one heroic piece of meat’s quest to discover the truth about his existence. After falling out of a shopping cart, the sausage protagonist teams up with some new friends to embark on a perilous journey through the supermarket and return to their aisles before the Fourth of July sale.”

As we’ve seen over the year on SNL, Bill Hader is one damn funny actor with a serious talent for impersonations. But I bet you probably won’t guess just which Star Wars impersonations he absolutely nails.

With a little more than two months left until Captain America: The Winter Soldier slings its shield into cinemas, it looks like co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo are impressing all the right people. You know how gobsmacked you were by the film’s badass looking trailers? Well, Marvel feel exactly the same way, and have apparently already begun talks with the siblings to helm a third Cap film. According to reports, “Marvel has been so impressed with the production of the film, as well as with strong results from recent test screenings, that the studio has moved fast to attach the brothers to the next installment.”

What’s most impressive about this is that before Winter Soldier, the Russo’s biggest directing achievements were some episodes of Community and the iffy comedy You, Me and Dupree. It seems though, based on this news and all the insanely positive buzz from everybody that’s seen footage from the film, that with a big budget and large canvas these guys can make some movie magic happen. April 2nd better get here real fast now.

George Clooney has done an AMA over on Reddit, and while talking about how he beat Leonardo DiCaprio in basketball and how his hobby is to fix shoes (really), he also dropped some hints about Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof’s ultra secretive something-to-do-with-Disneyland sci-fi adventure Tomorrowland.

“I literally have a harness on and I’ve been hanging from 30 ft from 4 different blue screens and literally as we are talking they are all staring at me because I had to get down to do this. I have all these wire hanging off of me….Brad is a really good guy with a wild imagination. If I don’t screw it up it will be a great film. You have to be careful what you say because everything is top secret, so I don’t want to ruin it by telling you that everyone dies in the end.”

Now you probably saw the news this morning Universal has plans to make a fourth installment in Vin Diesel’s Riddick series, after the last film hit no.1 on the DVD charts. Thing is, despite how Darryn wrote it, when Diesel made the announcement he wasn’t anywhere close to being as calm as his quote suggests. In fact, he was anything but, as he made the announcement via a video that feature Diesel bustin’ some moves and singing along to Katy Perry and Beyonce. Yes, for real.

You can witness the ….er, awesomeness? embarrassment? below, and if it gets a bit much, the actual announcement is at around the 3:11 mark.

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: January 29, 2014

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