Jrs' Sequel Buzz Thread

The Dark Tower Film Update

It’s time to update you guys on the status of the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, which is coming our way courtesy of J.J. Abrams and his production company, Bad Robot.

Stephen King is a major fan of Abrams’ Lost TV series (ending next year), and he met up with the producers behind the show, including Abrams and Lost co-executive producer Damon Lindelof. King famously sold the film rights for the entire Dark Tower series (seven books) to Abrams and Lindelof for only $19.00 (apparently the number 19 is big in the books).

Cinematical is reporting that the first Dark Tower (titled "The Gunslinger") movie could roll out as early as 2010, but apparently not until Lost wraps up its final season in the spring.

Lindelof mentioned that it would be of the same “scope” as The Lord of the Rings.

Source: Cinematical via Screenrant

All I can say is that this is one of those epic, legendary series of novels that transcend normal expectations. Whomever takes on a project like this has to go into it knowing there is a whole culture out there that only require perfection--anything less and it will go down in flames. This is on the same level as The Lord of the Rings--readers/fans waited YEARS between books...
...I wait with baited breath and I'll try VERY hard not to get my hopes up.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo To Direct Bioshock

The good news: Universal Pictures is making a big screen adaptation of the video game BioShock after all. The bad news: Gore Verbinski has stepped out of the director’s chair. Who is the new director? Why did Verbinski step down?

Lets recap the story thus far: Universal greenlit the movie, and director Gore Verbinski stepped down from directing a possible fourth film in the Pirates of the Carribbean series. But in late April, Universal shut down the production, due to the film’s ballooning budget. The plan was to rework the script and explore possible locations outside the country which would offer financial incentives. When asked by the Los Angeles Times for an update on the project, Verbinski sounded less than hopeful.

Well, that is exactly what Universal has done, and as Verbinski hinted at in the quote from a few months ago, the shooting schedule abroad prevents him from being able to commit to the overseas shoot. Variety says that Verbinski could not commit to the overseas scheduling due to his duties on the animated film Rango, which he is directing for Paramount, and stars Johnny Depp. So who is going to take Verbinksi’s place?

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, best known to American filmgoers as the writer/director of 28 Weeks Later. Verbinski will remain involved in the project, but only as producer.

Since its release, Hollywood has eyeing a big screen adaptation of this popular first-person shooter. Praised for its morality-based storyline, immersive environment and Ayn Rand-inspired dystopian setting, the game has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and ranks as the thirteenth best video game on Game Rankings. Set in an alternative history 1960, BioShock follows the story of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the underwater Objectivist-dystopian city of Rapture, and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it. Jack is drawn into a power struggle during which he discovers that his will is not as free as he’d thought. Aviator screenwriter John Logan penned the script.

Source: /Film

Ian McKellen Knows Who’s Playing Bilbo

According to /Film Ian McKellen recently attended an all-night showing of 'The Lord of the Rings trilogy' and gave the crowd an update on The Hobbit.

Last month Peter Jackson said that they won’t be revealing who’ll be playing Bilbo Beggins “for a little while” as they were still finishing the script. If what Ian McKellen says is correct they must have finished the first draft of the script and are getting the casting under way. Hopefully they’ll start letting us know who they’ve chosen soon!

Source: Filmonic

Hm. I didn't even know they were making a Hobbit movie. Read it so long ago, I forget the story. Bet there's gonna be a lot of walking involved though.

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The Freedom Roads

David Goyer Expects Magneto to Move Forward ‘in the Next Year’

It’s been a few years since David Goyer was hired to direct X-Men Origins: Magneto and at one point they were scouting for filming locations and working on the budget, however things didn’t work out (possibly due to the writers strike). Then we were told that Magneto would only go ahead if X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a success. Well it was (financially anyway), and I was hoping 20th Century Fox would give it the green-light as they have done with Deadpool. However, we haven’t heard anything yet and the latest comes from David Goyer who gave some slightly encouraging news.


The problem with X-Men Origins: Magneto is that it is probably the least ‘commercial’ X-Men movie 20th Century Fox could be working on. X-Men: First Class will have a similar audience to the previous X-Men films but not everyone will want to see Magneto running around with Xavier getting revenge on Navi’s.

Source: Filmonic

Marvel President Feige Promises Bigger Iron Man 2 Action

Those of you disappointed by the "climactic" battle between Iron Man and Obadiah Stane at the end of the first movie, Marvel's president of production Kevin Feige feels your pain. In his interview with Comic Book Resources he doesn't come right out and say that the first film's final battle was lame, but he does promise to kick it up a notch next time.

"On the highway and the rooftop in the last movie was great and the connection between Jeff [Bridges] and Robert was great but we wanted to give it a little more spectacle this time around for the finale," he said in the interview, in which he talked about pretty much everything else the studio has on its plate. While no bombshells were dropped-- still no one cast as Captain America, still no promises about what will happen in the Avengers movie-- it's an interesting look at the inner workings of Marvel, a company that plans to give us a lot of entertainment in the next few years.

Check out the interview for the status of the Captain America production, the reason they cast Chris Hemsworth as Thor, a non-answer about Edward Norton playing the Hulk in The Avengers and more.

Source: Cinema Blend

Listen to the First Single from the 'Where the Wild Things Are' Soundtrack

The first single from the upcoming "Where the Wild Things Are” soundtrack is now online and available to hear. The song, “All is Love”, is by Karen O and The Kids and will be featured on the soundtrack that will be released on September 29th. The song will be available digitally starting tomorrow.

Where the Wild Things Are opens on October 16th.


Source: Collider

Hancock 2 Actually Happening

Last week when director Peter Berg talked about Hancock 2 here, he didn’t sound as if he knew whether it would happen. Now here we are a few days later, and it definitely is.

THR says Columbia Pictures has hired Adam Fierro and Glen Mazzara to write the sequel.

No confirmation on where they’ll go with the sequel, but Berg has talked about bringing in yet another god-superhero for Will’s John Hancock character to interact with.

Source: Cinema Blend

Hancock 2 sounds good to me

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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~

'Batman 3' To Be Fully Shot In IMAX?

Christopher Nolan gave moviegoers a taste of what specially shot IMAX footage could do for superhero films when he used the format for a few key scenes of The Dark Knight. The format even inspired Jon Favreau to ponder IMAX for Iron Man 2. Now, a breaking rumor indicates that Nolan may be considering a total IMAX approach as he head into his third Batman installment.

According to the usually reliable crew at Ain't It Cool News, the next film in Nolan's "Batman" franchise, which has yet to receive an official title, could be completely shot in IMAX. If the report turns out to be true, every scene would be getting formatted from the first day of shooting to be spread across super-wide screens everywhere.

Nolan may have even been developing new cameras and techniques during work on his most recent film Inception, tinkering with specifications that could be used when he returns to the Caped Crusader and Gotham City.

The IMAX scenes in the last film took Batman's fight against The Joker's anarchic rampage to an entirely new level when they tore through theaters. If the action sequences in Nolan's next sequel follow suit, a total IMAX approach might be quite a spectacle.

Source: MTV

Timur Bekmambetov has “found the reason” for Jolie to return in Wanted 2

Angelina Jolie has not officially signed on to return for Wanted 2, and we don’t even know if she’ll be up for it, however if she is director Timur Bekmambetov has worked out a way for her character to return, despite shooting herself through the cranium at the end of the first film.

Bekmambetov has said that filming should begin at the end of the year. We should know if Jolie will be returning by then.

Source: Filmonic

Martin Campbell’s Plan To Shoot Green Lantern In Australia Might Be In Trouble

Production Weekly [via Twitter] is reporting that the on-location shoot in Australia for the Warner Brothers adaptation of DC’s Green Lantern may be in financial trouble.

On August 16th director Martin Campbell told The Hollywood Reporter that he would be taking the Hal Jordan show down under — he’d be shooting his film in Australia in other words. The start date for Green Lantern was set for September at Fox Studios in Sydney but it seems that our pesky global recession may have put a kink into Campbell’s plans.

Here’s the news from Inside Film [via tweet from Production Weekly]:

To put things back on terms we are all familiar with, studios don’t go on location just for pretty scenery. They get all sorts of tax incentives and price breaks that make filming in “foreign” cities cost effective. The Australian problem, should it prove out, won’t mean that Green Lantern won’t get in front of cameras, it just means that those cameras may end up being in another city… and that means delays.

The studio already pushed the Green Lantern release date back from December 2010 to June 17, 2011.

Source: Collider

xXx: Return Of Xander Cage Has A Director

Despite director Rob Cohen's recent departure from the project (he left to direct Medieval), actor Vin Diesel seemingly remains fully committed to starring in a third "XXX" movie.

The Hollywood Reporter says Ericson Core, director of the Mark Wahlberg-starring Invincible (1996), has replaced Cohen in the helmer's box. Diesel, having worked with Core on the first Fast and the Furious - of which the filmmaker was the DP - approved of the appointment.

John Brancato and Michael Ferris (Terminator Salvation) wrote the script for XXX : The Return of Xander Cage. It involves Cage's return to the National Security Agency after an eight-year absence. Richard Wilkes, who wrote the original movie, did a recent polish.

With Diesel a box-office draw again following his success in this year's Fast and Furious, Columbia are said to get this off-the-ground as soon as possible - - - before the actor decides, yet again, he's too good for sequels.

Source: Moviehole

Sarandon joins Wall Street 2

Susan Sarandon has joined the cast of the highly-anticipated (well it is my house anyway) Wall Street 2 : Money Never Sleeps, according to Variety.

The pic will reunite Sarandon with her Solitary Man co-star Michael Douglas, who is back as greedy, green-eyed Gordon Gecko.

Sarandon will play Shia LaBeouf's mother in the flick. The Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull star plays a young Wall Street trader who falls under the seductive influence of seasoned money-man Gecko.

Oliver Stone produces and directs the pic, a sequel to the 1987 hit that snagged Douglas an Oscar.

Source: Moviehole

Sequel to 1979's Love at First Bite in the Works

George Hamilton is reportedly trying to resurrect love-beseeching Count Vladimir Dracula .

The orange-skinned charmer will produce a sequel to his 1979 hit Love At First Bite. The 1979 hit has Count Dracula moving to New York to find his Bride, after being forced to move out of his Transylvanian castle.

Hamilton’s hoping to entice the Bella, Edward & Jacob fans to the new film.

"It's terrific. It's all about old world school of Dracula in the Bela Lugosi 1940s up against the Twilight felons with humor”, Hamilton told WENN. ‘’It's hard to do but it's great fun."

And Hamilton thinks the time is perfect for another vampire movie spoof: "I think 'Twilight' is a wonderful series of books. It's so important for these young girls with hormonal changes and this love that's worth giving your life for. But now I have a find a way to bring my Love At First Bite character into that kind of story and make it funny and not be at all like 'Twilight' and I think I found a way to do that."

The new film would be titled Batrimony: Love At Second Bite.

Source: Moviehole

Write something about Boondock 2 dude.

Kasper, he doesn't write about them, more like he searches the net (see the source). That's not to take anything away from this thread though, jrs puts in some grade A effort in searching for this info and relaying it to us here on the forum, even if over half of it makes me cringe while I think to myself: "Another sequel, damn you Hollywood!" I still like to read about it though. Thanks jrs!

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

When something new comes up I'll report it . It's comin out November 1st but nothing has been reported as of late. I found stuff like from April-May, but it was just tellin you that the movie was comin out at the end of this year and that the trailer was gonna be at comic-con. I think I know where the trailer is and I can post that if you like...otherwise there's nothin to post for The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day at this time.

Jolie to return in Wanted 2...mmm interesting considering the end of the film