Andrew Dominik‘s Cogan’s Trade will now be known as Killing Them Softly; Kathryn Bigelow‘s Kill Bin Laden is now titled Zero Dark Thirty; David Chase‘s untitled musical is now titled Not Fade Away.
Universal bailed on the McG-directed adaptation of the Hasbro board game Ouija when the budget went over $100 million, but now the project is back without McG, a $5 million budget and an anticipated 2013 release as studios are looking at making more films a la the low-budget Project X and Chronicle style of filmmaking. Well, that and the fact Uni had to pay a penalty fee to Hasbro for not making the film earlier… that penalty? $5 million, the film’s new budget. [source]
Ryan Reynolds hopes the Deadpool film gets made, but stresses the concern Fox may have with making an R-rated superhero movie saying, “If it’s going to be done it has to be done right.” [source]
Marvel Studios announced the new trailer for The Avengers broke a record when it was viewed over 13.7 million times in the first 24 hours of its debut on iTunes. Did you watch it? Click here if you didn’t and here to see 22 new screen captures I added to my gallery from the trailer.
Apparently Will Ferrell says Anchorman 2 is dead, but that he plans on writing a script for Step Brothers 2 with co-writer-director Adam McKay for filming in the fall. Ambitious much? [source]
David Ayer is getting to work on his new film End of Watch starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Anna Kendrick, America Ferrera and Frank Grillo. The catch to this one lies in the following plot description:
Giving the story a gripping, first-person immediacy, the action unfolds entirely through footage from the handheld HD cameras of the police officers, gang members, surveillance cameras, and citizens caught in the line of fire to create a riveting portrait of the city’s most dangerous corners, the cops who risk their lives there every day, and the price they and their families are forced to pay.
I don’t know about most of you, but the one thing I continually realize about these “found footage” style films is that I really have no interest in seeing any of them a second time. How can a director leave a stamp if the whole intention is to make it appear as if there was no director?
Finally, “The Simpsons” opened this past weekend with a parody of the “Game of Thrones” credit sequence. Ironically enough, yesterday I watched the first four episodes of “Game of Thrones” season one on Blu-ray. I liked it, but also realized there is no way that show will ever be able to capture the excellence of those books.
