Two More Sucker Punch Suckers

Two more femme fatales from Zack Snyder's upcoming "Sucker Punch" have been suckered into other roles and left Snyder like he had been punched (how lame of an opening can I make?).

Moving on...
According to The Geek Files, "Actress Jena Malone has stepped out of 'The Ruins' and into 'Watchmen' director Zack Snyder's $100 million female action flick 'Sucker Punch!'

Malone, 24, whose other credits include 'Donnie Darko,' 'Pride & Prejudice' and 'Into the Wild,' replaces Evan Rachel Wood while Jamie Chung ('Dragonball Evolution') replaces Emma Stone. Both had dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. A month earlier Amanda Seyfried left for the same reasons and was replaced by Emily Browning.

Also cast in the film - at present anyway - are Abbie Cornish and Zac Efron's girlfriend and fellow 'High School Musical' star Vanessa Hudgens.

The film is set for release in October 2010. Set in the 1950s, the story revolves around a girl (Browning) confined to a mental institution by her evil stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomised in five days.

She imagines an alternative reality to hide from the pain and in that world begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to get out. Malone, Chung, Hudgens and Cornish play fellow inmates who also travel into the alternative reality."

Malone may in fact be just as good a score as Wood as both are fine actresses. Malone takes over for Wood playing Cornish’s younger sister while Chung replaces Stone and will play Amber, a country girl with a big heart. Both characters are inmates. Word is Wood and Stone both dropped off due to scheduling conflicts.

So many scheduling conflicts. Three girls have dropped out so far. Hopefully everything will stay intact and the movie will come out when it is supposed to.
More news to come! Catch ya' later!

More Character Profiles for Wolverine

Got a nice new batch of character profiles for secondary characters in the new "Wolverine" movie.

They pretty much screwed Emma Frost up from the comics and The Blob looks retarded, but we aren't seeing this movie for them, are we?

EMMA FROST


WILLIAM STRYKER


BLOB

Watchmen Case Isn't Settled

"Watchmen" was a pretty sweet movie but didn't perform as well as it could have in theaters. But the lawsuit insanity behind the film, which was between propert rights for which studio owned it, isn't over. Fox won the battle and the big question now is who will pay up?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Warner Bros. and producer Larry Gordon have set a date to figure out who's responsible for the legal fracas that led to Fox owning a piece of 'Watchmen.' But given the pic's lackluster boxoffice performance, there might not be much loot to fight over.

Attorneys for the two sides have agreed to meet May 13 in a confidential, nonbinding mediation before showbiz mediator Daniel Weinstein. At issue is how much, if anything, Gordon owes Warners after a judge ruled that Fox -- which initially developed the property with Gordon -- owned a distribution right to the superhero pic.

Heated chain-of-title litigation between Fox and Warners ended in a January settlement that gave Fox a cash payment and up to 8.5% of the film's proceeds, depending on how well it did. The $138 million-budgeted pic has grossed $180 million worldwide after a heavy marketing campaign.

While Warners certainly isn't celebrating the weak boxoffice haul, one bright spot is that the studio likely will owe Fox only about 5% of the film's proceeds, according to multiple sources familiar with the settlement."



Will Gordon wind up having to pay the money to Fox or will it Jake Bloom's law firm which is at fault for not recognizing a 1991 agreement on which Fox based its lawsuit.

"The Bloom firm is said to have a $15 million insurance policy that both Warners and Gordon likely will seek to tap for the settlement. Given the film's performance -- and the fact that sequels and derivative works are likely dead -- that amount could cover everything that will be owed to Fox. Some believe, however, that a global settlement will require Warners, Gordon and his attorneys all to contribute."

Seeing as how I am interested in getting involved with entertainment law, this is some serious business that I should be paying attention to.
But who is at fault? Who should pay? The movie is already out so why should we care?

More news to come! Catch ya' later!

More Robert Langdon

According to Variety, "While Columbia Pictures is prepping for the May 15 release of Ron Howard’s Tom Hanks starrer 'Angels and Demons,' the studio will move quickly on the third pic in the franchise.

Author Dan Brown has announced that his next installment in the 'Da Vinci Code' series will be 'The Lost Symbol,' which Doubleday will publish in the U.S. and Canada on Sept. 15. The first print run will be a whopping 5 million copies. Much more than that will be needed if the sales of 'Angels and Demons' and 'Da Vinci Code' are anything to go by.

'Angels and Demons' has sold 39 million copies to date, and that number is certain to go up following the book’s recent reemergence on the New York Times bestseller list in anticipation of the film’s release. Those sales lag behind 'The Da Vinci Code,' whose 81 million copies sold puts it behind the Bible but not much else.

Sources said Brown has completed his manuscript. Sony has the rights to the Robert Langdon character, which gives the studio the right to negotiate a deal for the new title. The studio will be bullish. 'The Da Vinci Code' grossed $758 million worldwide in 2006, and Columbia has high hopes for the sequel produced by Imagine topper Brian Grazer and John Calley. Brown is exec producer."

Now that is a whopper of news. I didn't know Brown was writing a third book in the series. What confuses me about everything is that "Da Vinci Code" takes place after "Angels and Demons," but in the movies it is opposite, so "The Lost Symbol" will come after "Da Vinci Code" in the books but after "Angels and Demons" in the movies.

Now isn't that confusing?
More news to come! Catch ya' later!

Heavy Metal

"Heavy Metal" is a pretty awesome adult-oriented cartoon that came out in 1981. It is based off a comics magazine and was made into a cartoon about glowing orb that terrorizes a young girl with a collection of stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.

It plays really cool heavy metal rock music during a lot of the animation and there is plenty of gore and nudity. If you watch "South Park" then you might know about it. The episode where Kenny sniffs cat piss to get high takes him to another world where everything deals with boobs and has different animation. This is spoofing "Heavy Metal."



A sequel to the film was made but it had nothing to do with the original and instead tried to make a plot while keeping music, gore and nudity. To say the least "Heavy Metal 2000" was nothing like the original.

Now it seems that Zack Snyder, director of "Watchmen" and "300," is teaming up with David Fincher ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and Gore Verbinski ("Pirates of the Caribbean") to create a "Heavy Metal" for the new generation.

“‘Heavy Metal,’ is coasting,” Snyder told MTV News of the in-development project. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, I’m excited about it. I love ‘Heavy Metal,’ if that happens it’ll be great.”

When MTV News last checked in on “Heavy Metal,” they asked co-director Fincher if he had any particular stories from the original films or comic magazine he’d like to tackle, to which he mentioned that Snyder had already set his sights on one story in particular. MTV News decided to ask on what story ideas he wanted to include in the new "Heavy Metal."

“[Fincher, Verbinski and I] talked about certain segments, it’s nothing that you would know from the magazine,” hinted Snyder. “It’s a special little one-off thing but it’s pretty cool, that’s all I can really say about it.”

I will definitely be looking for more news on this film because the original "Heavy Metal" is just fun to watch and has influenced so many science fiction films including "Blade Runner" and "The Fifth Element."
More news to come! Catch ya' later!

Downey Jr. Talks Iron Man 2

The good folks over at Collider had the chance to interview Robert Downey Jr. during a press junket for his upcoming film "The Soloist." Of course, they had to ask about "Iron Man 2."

“Day one I’m doing a Senate hearing where the government is saying the Iron Man tech needs to be turned over to the Senator and the Senator is Gary Shandling,” said Downey in reference to recent rumors that Shandling had joined the production. “And we had this fantastic day that was somehow this controlled chaos of a Senate hearing where I keep interrupting them and dah dah dah.”

Downey also makes mention of a new Iron Man suit in the follow-up film, but notes that there are definite risks involved with “Iron Man 2.”

“The set pieces have to do with things that aren’t your typical, like, bad guy conflict,” Downey said. “The relationships are very complex and hilarious. The motivations Tony has and why he turns around and does things has completely to do with his own internal processes and it really is, I think, as much as we tried to in the first one really see behind the façade of this kind of storytelling. We really, I think, leaving ourselves open to…we’re kind of trying to tell a story about how a dysfunctional family saves life on Earth as we know it.”

Downey also spoke up about his new co-star in “Iron Man 2.″ Downey only had praise for Mickey Rourke’s role in the surefire blockbuster.

“I’ve seen his stuff and it is literally remarkable,” Downey said. “Literally remarkable. He’s so good. And he’s formidable and he’s very much reminding me of that kind of charming, confident guy that we know.”

Are you looking forward to "Iron Man 2?" I am!
More news to come! Catch ya' later!

Bay's "Small" Movie

On Sunday I wrote that Michael Bay wants to stall "Transformers 3" to make a small movie.
He described it as a dark comedy.

Now the full details on Bay's pet project have been revealed.

According to Slash Film, "For the past decade, Michael Bay has been itching to make a feature film adaptation of a Miami News article. Described as 'a mixture of 'Fargo' and 'Pulp Fiction'' or ''Point Break' with bodybuilders', 'Pain & Gain' tells the true story of a couple of Florida steroid-abusing knucklehead bodybuilders who become criminals involved in an extortion ring and a a kidnapping plot that goes horribly awry.

And as Bay hinted at in the MTV interview, the story is more of a character piece than anything else, real dark comedy. There isn’t even room for an action scene aside from one car crash. The film was originally set up at Paramount with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the team that worked on 'The Chronicles of Narnia' films and 'The First Avenger: Captain America' for Marvel. Bay also called the project untitled, which means they might be going in a different direction for the film’s title."

You can read the entire 8-page article, which was published in December 1999 on the Miami New Times Web site.

Let's see if Bay can make a movie dealing more with character development than action and explosions.
Bay knows he is known mostly for making things "awesome," so maybe he wants to make something more sentimental and experimental for him than his usual MO.

More news to come! Catch ya' later!

Box Office Results and Weekly Movie News

Movies coming out this week!

Obsessed - A successful business man (Elba) with a beautiful wife (Knowles) becomes the target of a female stalker (Larter).

Fighting - In New York City, a young counterfeiter (Tatum) is introduced to the world of underground street fighting by a seasoned scam artist (Howard), who becomes his manager on the bare-knuckling brawling circuit.

The Soloist - In Los Angeles, reporter Steve Lopez (Downey Jr.) befriends Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx), a brilliant but troubled musician and one-time Julliard student who currently lives on Skid Row. In a series of revealing articles, Lopez draws attention to Ayers's remarkable story, while Ayers still dreams of a grand performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Movies coming out on DVD!

The Wrestler
Frost/Nixon
Notorious
Caprica


Box Office results for the weekend!

1 17 Again$24.0 M

2 State of Play$14.1 M

3Monsters vs. Aliens $12.9 M

4 Hanna Montana The Movie $12.6 M

5Fast & Furious $12.3 M

6 Crank: High Voltage$6.5 M

7 Observe & Report $4.0 M

8Knowing $3.4 M

9I Love You, Man $3.3 M

10The Haunting In Connecticut $3.1 M

Tween girls must be going nuts right now. Last week was "Hannah Montana" and this week Zac Effron. My god...what would happen if those two started dating?

Cue the sound of the world suddenly imploding from tween girls screaming.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" reached $250 million worldwide this past weekend while "Fast and Furious" reached $227 million. "MvA" has a budget of $175 million while "FaF" had a budget of $85 million. Which made a better profit?

"Crank 2" wasn't screened for the press so word did not get out on the film at all. Bad call because it was a really fun movie.

Other films are starting to peter out to the bottom because the major summer blockbusters are around the corner. Next weekend has movies coming out, but we all know we are looking at May to start off summer.