Guest TSMAdmin Report post Posted June 23, 2003 TSM Movie News Round-Up For the week ending Friday May 30th, 2003. Compiled by Jason Castleman Oh, wow, what a boring week. Not much going on worth talking about but I managed to scrape something together anyway. Alien: Bigger, Longer and Uncut The upcoming theatrical re-release of Alien looks to be something interesting. The movie will have almost every bit of cut footage from the original movie re-inserted and the soundtrack will be remastered to fit in with the sound technology of today. Reportedly the restored footage clocks in at an amazing 12 minutes. That should make the movie...well....12 minutes longer. Don't think that this is just a small special re-release to do nothing but advertise the DVD box set. This is a real release on over 2,000 screens. If this one ends up making money, Aliens will get the same treatment in the spring. Stepford Wives: Comedy Donald De Line, producer of the upcoming remake of The Stepford Wives, told SCI-FI Wire that the film reinvents the story by going for laughs, but preserves the central premise: The men of a Connecticut village have replaced their wives with robots. "You can remake something, [or] you can do it in a way where you take iconic elements of an original and then make it original again for its time," De Line said in an interview. "That's what is done with The Stepford Wives, which completely turns it on its head, because it's a comedy." Stepford starts filming June 16 in New York, with a cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Matthew Broderick, De Line said. Frank Oz directs from Paul Rudnick's script. I was gonna say something smart ass here about remaking a horror movie into a comedy. Then I remembered that pretty much all horror movies they make these days are comedies anyway so what's the difference? It's Milla Time! Screen Gems is developing two films to star the ultimate screen goddess, Milla Jovovich, Variety reported. Jovovich will reprise the role of Alice in Alexander Witt's upcoming sequel to Resident Evil which we all know about, but after that Jovovich will star in Screen Gems' Ultraviolet, a futuristic film in which she will play the title character, a vampire who finds herself the protector of a 9-year-old boy targeted for death against the backdrop of a civil war between humans and vampires. Ultraviolet will shoot in Shanghai in December, with Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) directing from his own script. According to comments from Wimmer on CHUD.com, Milla is already in extensive physical training for the role including some kung fu and swordwork. A lot like the training Uma had to go through for Kill Bill. Sounds like a total rip off of Underworld, but who cares?! Milla F'n Jovovich is in it and Kurt F'n Wimmer is directing it. Give me a whole box of tissues. Billy Murray is a big fat ass cat Variety reports that Bill Murray has signed to do the voice for the live-action/CGI film adaptation of Garfield, based on the hit comic series by Jim Davis. The eventual film will be released by 20th Century Fox. Garfield also stars Breckin Meyer as Jon Arbuckle, as well as Jennifer Love Hewitt, who will be playing Meyer's love interest. The story has Jon bringing a new pup named Odie home. But when Jon's jealous cat, Garfield, schemes to get rid of Odie, Odie ends up being kidnapped. Feeling guilty, Garfield ensues on a mission to save his new companion. Reportedly, Garfield will be done completely in CGI much like Scooby-Doo; however, the characters of Odie and Nermal will be done using real-live animals, but with CGI animated mouths. In other news, this movie will suck. No, seriously.... why get Bill Murray? Why not get the guy who does the animated Garfield? I associate that voice with him just as much as his look. When I read the strip, THAT is the voice I hear. In the movie the only thing I'll hear is Bill Murray, not Garfield. This week's sign of the Apocalypse: Avril Lavigne's hit single "Sk8er Boi" is heading to the big screen with Paramount Pictures optioning the song and hiring David Zabel to adapt its words into a feature film to be produced by studio-based MTV Films and Alphaville. The song is about a teenage girl who rejects a skater boy with a crush on her because her friends didn't approve of him -- even though she secretly likes him. Years later, he becomes a famous rock star and she is left with regrets. The film keeps the Sk8er Boi title and will focus on the two teens from different backgrounds and the social constraints in which they find themselves. Bad omens for The League Sean Connery has taken charge of the big-budget blockbuster film The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and has been overseeing the editing process of the film from bases in the Bahamas, New York and Los Angeles. Filming of the movie, which ended earlier this year, was dogged by a series of arguments between the actor and director Stephen Norrington. It was also disrupted when flooding on location in Prague damaged sets worth £7 million. A spokesperson for Connery told the London Evening Standard: "Sean often sits in on the editing of his films. He's simply living up to his responsibilities." It's official: this movie is gonna be terrible. You just can't let an actor edit the friggin movie. That's terrible. I don't care who the actor is, you just do NOT let an actor in the editing room. Now all we'll get is 2 hours of Sean Connery. It's like Spinal Tap except with [insert plot here] Star Wars actor Mark Hamill will star in and direct Comic Book: The Movie, a semi-fictional documentary for Creative Light Entertainment, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Slated for a fall release, Comic Book is an improv film that follows the world's biggest comic fan, who has been hired to direct a documentary about his favorite comic-book heroes of all time, the trade paper reported. The movie was filmed on location at San Diego's Comic-Con International and features cameos from Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, among others, the trade paper reported. Older School DreamWorks has announced plans to move ahead with a sequel to this year's hit comedy Old School. The original film, which starred Will Ferrell, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn, took in $75 million domestically and was produced for only $24 million. The sequel is still early in development. Ferrell, Wilson and Vaughn are likely to return. ANOTHER sign of the Apocalypse: Martin Brest, Michael Bay and Tony Scott are all interested in directing the upcoming Beverly Hills Cop 4. You'll have to wait longer for this stupid movie Trying to set the all-time record in how fast a film can go from theaters to video, 20th Century Fox had scheduled From Justin to Kelly to be released on June 13 with a video release just SIX weeks later. The studio is now looking to bring it to home video in early September. Fox had been fighting with several of the country's leading exhibitors who had threatened to not play the film if the timings between the release windows remained so tight. Now that Fox has compromised and moved the window back six weeks, most of the exhibitors have agreed to play the film. I got an easy solution for this problem. Just put your stupid ass movie direct to video and save us all the misery and embarrassment of seeing that thing end up making money at the box office. Yet another sign of the Apocalypse: MTV News reports that Adam Garcia in talks to rejoin Piper Perabo in the 'more romantic' Coyote Ugly 2. Get Shorter MGM is in talks with John Travolta to reprise his role of Chili Palmer in Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, which was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Variety reports that the follow-up begins after Palmer, the savvy Miami loan shark-turned-movie producer, hatches a hit film and then a bomb. He then becomes the promoter of a struggling singer who is being pursued by the Russian mafia. The trade adds that the talks with Travolta coincide with growing expectations that Brett Ratner will come aboard as the film's director, after sparking to a script draft by Peter Steinfeld that emboldened the studio to move forward aggressively. Ratner owes his next picture to New Line who are hoping he will helm Rush Hour 3, but it is far from clear that the sequel will be ready in the short term, in which case MGM would have to make a deal with New Line. Travolta, who is currently filming Ladder 49, will next star in Artisan's The Punisher and follow that with A Love Song for Bobby Long. Then he will turn his attention to either Dimension's Harvey remake or Be Cool. You know one day I'd really love to be able to do this story.... Directer Brett Ratner dead at age 17 17 year old amateur hack Brett Ratner died today after being attacked by a pack of wild dingos. He leaves behind an impressive list of artistic failures including, but not limited to, Rush Hour, Red Dragon and The Family Man. When reached for comment, fellow hack Paul W.S. Anderson (Event Horizon, Soldier) said, "Well, I guess this officially makes me the worst working director in Hollywood! Woo Hoo!" Ratner's last words were reportedly, "the Chooper is real." What a dream that would be. But, back to the real world.... Lizzie McDead Looking forward to the second Lizzie McGuire movie? Don't bother. After weeks of negotiations over the future career of teen sensation Hilary Duff, the star of the Disney Channel's hit sitcom and movie, the two sides are splitting up amid accusations of greed and squandered opportunities. Struggling to shore up its bottom line, Disney was eager to keep alive its most successful home-grown franchise in years. The company had planned another movie for Duff as well as a possible Lizzie-in-high-school sitcom for Disney's struggling television network, ABC. But the 15-year-old actress from Houston was at a crossroads, looking to expand beyond her role as an awkward and lovable middle-schooler that brought her fame on the small and big screens. Despite last-ditch attempts by top Disney executives and Duff's lawyer to keep her in the corporate family, efforts at a reconciliation failed when the actress' representatives turned down the company's offer for a movie sequel and a new TV series aimed at a slightly older crowd. While her Lizzie days may be over, Duff's career is not. The actress is shooting 20th Century Fox's Cheaper by the Dozen and next month begins production on the Warner Bros. film Cinderella Story. 4 years, 175 hours, 43 minutes and 34 seconds until former child star Hilary Duff poses nude in Hustler. One more sign of the Apocalypse: Failed pop star Jessica Simpson tells MSN that she's got her debut movie in the works and it's yet another Marvel superhero movie. "One woman who is definitely not in the running is singer Jessica Simpson. But she is managing to keep tight-lipped about playing the lead in the next big movie based on a popular Marvel Comics series. "I don't know if your everyday person would know it," she recently told reporters, "but I can tell you this -- it's not Wonder Woman." Hell, at least Justin Timberlake is a star. I can understand the reasoning, to a point, of wanting him in Superman. He'd sell millions of tickets. THIS chick right here couldn't put butts in seat if she was naked for the entire movie. But, hey, at least she knows that Wonder Woman isn't Marvel! It's a start. And that's it for the news. Check out this week's new trailers.... My Boss' Daughter Wrong Turn 28 Days Later Jeepers Creepers 2 Tomb Raider 2 The Hard Word Capturing the Friedmans The Cat in the Hate Prozac Nation Mystic River Matchstick Men Elf Seabisquit I'm done. I'm leaving right now to go see Wrong Turn. The last movie I saw was Reloaded and I walked out of that. Hopefully I'll get through all of this one. I'll be back next Friday with more news and even more sarcasm. Click here to tell me how stupid I am. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
