Movie News Mash 23

IRON MAN 2
After 72 days of intensive shooting, Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige announced the wrap of principle photography on "Iron Man 2" with a statement:

"Shooting ‘Iron Man 2′ was a fantastic experience and we couldn’t be happier. Although there were many challenges in making this film, having Jon Favreau, Robert Downey, Gwyneth Paltrow and almost the entire crew from the first film back on board, allowed us to hit the ground running as everyone was instantly familiar with each other from day one. This dynamic allowed us to get done what we needed on a day to day basis and was a big factor in why we finished slightly ahead of schedule. Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell and especially Don Cheadle all stepped right in and meshed well with our returning cast.

“What’s more difficult in shooting a sequel is that expectations are much higher for this film and we really want to top what we did on the first film. Every day involved working extremely hard in order to improve upon what we did on the first film.”
(Screen Rant, Marvel)

VOLTRON
THR's Risky Biz Blog announced that the live-action rights to a "Voltron" movie have switched owners. Charles Roven ("The Dark Knight"), Richard Suckle ("The International") and Steve Alexander are the new producers on this. They replace Mark Gordon who had brought on Justin Marks, the screenwriter responsible for "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li." Marks had written a "Voltron" script that focused on an alien invasion in an apocalyptic North America. The new owners will restart development on this from scratch and I believe will throw out Marks' screenplay. That is probably the best step toward making this film.

"Voltron," an animated TV series from the '80s that has retained a loyal fan following, is about a band of five robot-lions that combine to form one super lion. A group of five pilots control the lions, which are charged with defending the planet Arus from villain King Zarkon, who dispatches evil creatures called Robobeats to fight the Voltron robots. “It’s undeniably impressive that Voltron has sustained itself globally for a quarter of a century,” Roven said. Atlas Entertainment, run by Roven, Suckle, and Alexander, will move forward on developing this right away.
(First Showing)

TARZAN
One of the many projects that "Pirates of the Caribbean" screenwriter Stuart Beattie has in the works is "Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle," a live-action Tarzan movie for Stephen Sommers to eventually direct. Collider caught up with Beattie and talked with him about a lot of his projects, including "Tarzan." Additionally, Beattie talks quite a bit about the script, the setting and details of the story, and just what we can expect. As for its status, he explains that Warner Brothers is currently fine tuning the budget.

Beattie's "Tarzan" will be set around the time of 1933 and is meant to have all the adventure as other films that took place during that time period, such as "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

"It's that kind of swashbuckling, fun, I mean Great Depression–I can't believe it's that much fun–but you know it's that era of all those serials and everything that was so great and so popular. Big jungle adventure film."

"Tarzan is, I think, probably the most filmed story of all, so our belief in doing a Tarzan movie today was you couldn't go tell the raised by gorillas and loincloths and 'Me: Tarzan and You: Jane'-story because it's been done so much and it's just not interesting anymore. So it was much more big romantic action-adventure film with supernatural stuff and a witch doctor and lots of really fun stuff. And mythic Africa, like that deep dark heart of Africa stuff, you know, where the trees are twice as big and the vines stretched forever and the canopy is a whole world in itself and just really cool looking place to spend a couple of hours."

Stephen Sommers is attached to direct and might be his next project after "G.I. Joe" if Warner Brothers works out the budget "If they reach an agreement, yeah. Very much could be," Beattie said.
(First Showing, Collider)