Screenhead

On behalf of Overture Films, Screenhead presents a new production still featuring Radha Mitchell from The Crazies, starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker and Joe Anderson.  Quite a bit has been posted here about The Crazies, which opens February 26, 2010. 

The story is about a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Johnny Depp may join Angelina Jolie in The Tourist, a film that is experiencing many, many casting and directing changes – yet is set for production this February.   

If Depp joined Jolie, he would play an American tourist drawn into a web of intrigue and danger by a female Interpol agent (Jolie) as she attempts to locate a criminal who was once her lover.

You may be asking yourself, wait…I thought Sam Worthington was playing this part or Tom Cruise.  You’re thoughts are correct but changes happen in the film biz fast and furious.  Even Charlize Theron was attached to play Jolie’s part.

I am not sure about all the directors, but Alfonso Curaron is at the head of the line to take on this juicy and plum gig.

I like the idea of Depp and Jolie working together on a spy thriller. Don’t you?

(Source)

Sam Worthington is looking good in a collection of posters.  First Showing has a whole collection of them and they are worth a look.  Some sites have had to take them off their site because Warner Bros. made a strong request to do so. 

Apparently, they are not the official posters, but creative mock-ups for decision makers, I suspect.

I don’t know how long these will be available to see, but check them out while you can.  Does any one know when the movie opens in the theaters?

Ridley Scott is one BUSY individual.  But let’s face facts–the man’s got like thirty hojillion projects in the works right now, so his announcement that he’s considering an Alien prequel needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  A grain of salt about, say, the size of a Buick.

But he’s clearly been thinking it over, and even has some possible strategies.  Dig the word:

“It’s a brand new box of tricks. We know what the road map is, and the screenplay is now being put on paper. The prequel will be a while ago. It’s very difficult to put a year on Alien, but [for example] if Alien was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior.”

There are possibilities here.  After all, I seem to remember that one of the earliest parts of Alien described an alien ship that crash-landed on LV 426.  Checking Wikipedia confirms my scattered memories, so a great point for an Alien prequel would be, what is that ship, and how did it get jam-packed with xenomorphs?

Of course, it’s a fair bet that that’s a Predator ship that was seeding the planet for use as a hunting ground, so they may have already kinda sorta covered that already.  Still though, I find myself plenty interested in where they’re looking to go with this one.

So maybe Peter Berg wasn’t the best choice to handle the upcoming remake of Dune.  He walked off the project very recently, leaving Paramount to fill in the hole as best it could, and man, do they ever have an option.

They’ve sent out scripts to two new director possibilities, and you won’t believe who they are.

Neill Blomkamp and Neil Marshall.

Oh yeah.  District 9 and Doomsday themselves are going after Dune.

And even better, chances are Berg took Robert Pattinson with him back when R-Pattz was thinking about tackling Paul Atriedes.

Between two prime directors with actual sci-fi cred now possibly handling the Dune remake, and the fact that Rob Pattinson likely now has nothing to do with Dune, suddenly I’m feeling like getting into a happy dance out here.  There’s so much joy and win in this news post that I may well faint from the sheer happiness of it all.

Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are talking with Joel and Ethan Coen to hitch a ride with Jeff Bridges in True Grit. A remake or redesign or re-imaging of the iconic 1969 Western tale that Paramount Pictures plans to start production next March for late 2010 release. 

Bridges will play U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn with Damon talking about playing the lawman (played by Glen Campbell in the original) who teams up with Cogburn and a 14-year old girl to track her father’s killer into hostile Indian territory.

Brolin is talking about playing the killer. Jeff Corey played the killer in the original, and Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper also played outlaws.

Coen brothers haven’t cast the young girl yet.

Look…Weinsteins…I know your company’s hurting.  I know the economy’s doing a number on pretty much everybody these days.  But do you really have to sink QUITE so low as to be planning a remake of Scary Movie, WHILE you’re planning the fourth sequel?

That’s right, folks, currently in concurrent development over at the soon to be dead Weinstein Company is the remake of Scary Movie, as well as Scary Movie 5.  Considering that the Scary Movie series has brought in more cash than the GDP of some entire countries–well over a whopping seven hundred twenty five million and change–it’s not really a surprise that Weinstein is looking frantically for the biggest cash cow it can milk.

This doesn’t make the news any more palatable, though….

Release dates on either title are still fairly sketchy, but look for them both on the order of pretty soon.  The Weinsteins can’t afford much delay….

Well now, here’s something interesting for you lovers of dystopian fare, like myself.  Seems that they’re working out some of the kinks involved in a remake of Mad Max, and they’ve come to two very interesting conclusions:

1. Charlize Theron should be in it.

2. Mel Gibson should NOT be in it.

You may be wondering how the elderly raving lunatic that started the whole thing, pretty much, is managing to be thrown over for a much younger man in the form of Tom Hardy.  In case you’re wondering who Tom Hardy is, he’s the guy who played Captain Picard’s clone in the poorly-realized cash grab Star Trek: Nemesis.

And I basically just answered the question right there.  Studio heads claim Mel’s just too old to handle the part any more.  So they’re handing it over to…the guy who made a bad movie even worse?  I guess this is why I don’t make the big bucks, because that just sounds IDIOTIC.

After hearing the various rumors flying around the Star Trek remake, which was still one of the all time greats as far as the Star Trek series specifically goes, and probably as science fiction in general goes, it was a surprise to catch up to this new chunklet of news.

Apparently, there’s talk that no less than William Shatner will be coming back to the second installment of the remade Star Trek.

J.J. Abrams himself is apparently looking at bringing Shatner on Board, saying that he “would love to work with him (Shatner)”, but the big problem was that “his character died on screen in one of his (Shatner’s) Trek films and we that we wanted to adhere to Trek canon”.  So let that be a lesson to you, kids…Shatner cares more about Shatner than he does established canon.

It’s pretty much shameful how Shatner’s been handling this pretty much since the inception of the Trek remake got started, so frankly, I’d sooner not see him back at all.  But if Abrams can work out a way, I’m willing to work with it.

When I was in high school, not long after the movie The Crow came out, the Crow’s outfit and makeup quickly became like a uniform to the disaffected of my high school.  There was something about that undead avenger that just got everybody’s hackles up, and for a while, it was all some could think about.

So imagine my shock to find that there was a remake in the works.

Of course, the sequels that followed The Crow were all pretty much garbage, and the television series a sick joke that lasted less than one season.  So why not just start all over and hope to recapture that initial burst that made the original a big deal?

They’re no doubt hoping for a Dark Knight style success with this one, but I doubt they’ll get it.  Considering that they’re looking to put Stephen Norrington in charge–and the last time he was in charge we got League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–my hopes are few.