March 2008 News Archive (Page 5)

Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor director, Rob Cohen, gives us some updates on the latest installment of the Mummy franchise on his blog.

Here's a small excerpt:

There's more good news on "The Mummy" front: I have shown the film to the exec's at Universal and they are through-the-roof ecstatic. We screened a few weeks ago for all the relevant department heads (home video, distribution, foreign, p.r., marketing, etc.) and the reaction was unanimous. It's running around 1 hr. 53 minutes and, daily as we hone, it's taking its final shape. The studio has been very collaborative and supportive. You know they love it when they ask you if you need any more money to enhance the visual effects budget!!! Are there more shots that I want to do but didn't have the money to do?!!! Of course, the answer is yes; there is never enough to entertain the audience in any film. That kind of support from Chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde, President Donna Langley, and V.P.'s Jeff Kirschenbaum and Erik Baiers is rare in Hollywood so I am very pleased all the way around.

Cohen goes on to to talk a lot about what's keeping the movie in post production so long. You can read the full blog entry.

X-Men star, Hugh Jackman teams up with Eli Stone co-creator, Marc Guggenheim to create a new comicbook series, Nowhere Man.

According to Variety, Nowhere Man features a protagonist reminscient of Will Smith's character in I Am Legend.

Guggenheim has experience with comicbooks as he's written issues of "Amazing Spider-Man" and "Wolverine" for Marvel Comics.

Jackman, of course, has experience with comicbooks as he's played Wolverine in the past three X-Men movies and is working on X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The comicbook will be published under Virgin Voices line. The creators are already planning trying videogames and movies with their Nowhere Man comic.

Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns based on Tyler Perry's play of the same name, has been in theaters for almost a week now. What did critics think of this producer, writer, director, and actor's lastest work?

To appreciate Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns, there's really only one requirement: Loosen up. -- Washington Post

An adaptation of one of his stage plays, Meet the Browns gives off the distinct feeling that Perry is treading water or at the very least is content to satisfy his audience with the minimum. -- Los Angeles Times

Feel-good themes of resilience, faith and family aren't sufficient to redeem this scattershot single-parent dramedy from the Diary of a Mad Black Woman auteur. -- E! Online

Meet the Browns is lots of fun -- light on the Jesus-ifying and heavy on showcasing some very talented African-American performers whom audiences don't get to see often enough. You'll be glad to have been introduced. -- MSNBC

The Hammer is the brain child of Adam Carolla.  He fought hard to get this movie made, so what did the critics think?

The script depends heavily on familiar stand-up comedy bits, but it's full of sharp wisecracks and slacker charm. --  The New York Post

Carolla's gangling charm and improv rhythms nicely loosen up helmer Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's studied setups without ever deviating from the story's solid underlying structure.  -- Variety

So many movies these days are overworked or overblown: The Hammer feels genuinely tossed-off. It isn't a great movie, or even a consistently good one. Yet it gets to elusive feelings about failure and success, hope and mortality. -- The Wall Street Journal

If you liked Rocky Balboa you should be in good shape, since it's exactly the same movie, just aimed at a teeny-tiny-bit younger demographic and with an affectless leading man who avoids hambone acting by not acting at all. -- Salon.com

Smart People comes out in a little more than three weeks.  The comedy stars Dennis Quaid as a pompous professor who suffers from a concussion and ends up falling for his E.R. doctor played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

Smart People also stars Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church.

Today, we'd like to present you with the movie's movie poster.

As usual, as soon as the movie comes out we'll have reviews, pictures, and quotes ready for you.

Run, Fat Boy, Run, the next vehicle starring writer / actor Simon Pegg is about to hit theaters tomorrow.

Comingsoon.net was lucky enough to interview Pegg about his upcoming movie. Here's a small excerpt with the star of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

ComingSoon.net: How did David convince you to come onto this project both as a writer and as the star? Did he just send you the script and ask?

Simon Pegg: Well I got the call and I read it again and I thought, "How is this going to work as a British set film?" because it very much had the spirit of New York in it. It had the New York Marathon, it was intrinsically New York, and at first I kind of resisted it. I was like, "Well, can't we just come shoot it here and I can play an American?" The (production) company Material are all about shooting in London, and obviously we want to keep our film industry going and make sure our crews work because they're brilliant and so I thought, "Well okay, this is a challenge then. This is going to be some hard work." It actually was easier than I thought it was, because I think London and New York have a similar sensibility. I think they have more in common with each other than say New York and L.A. in terms of the metropolitan feel of the place, so it was just the case of taking it on as a challenge, and I always like a challenge.

CS: Did anyone have worries about David being American trying to direct a British comedy?

Pegg: No, not at all. What he was doing was directing a comedy in Britain. He wasn't directing a Bollywood film, you know? The cultural difference wasn't that great, and he's a very adept comic and director.

CS: Did you actually have to create a marathon for this thing?

Pegg: Yeah, we were tied up in all sorts of nonsense. The London Marathon is sponsored by a margarine company and that entity is tied up with another film, so the rights to that event we couldn't get, so we had to invent an event which we did with the kind help of a major sports clothing company. It became this River Run, which doesn't really exist, so we shot it basically with about two hundred fifty people and then the magic of crowd replication, which you could do digitally, made it look like a real marathon.

You can read the rest of the interview at Comingsoon.net.

Guy Ritchie's latest movie, RocknRolla, due out October 31, is going to be a trilogy according to lead actress Thandie Newton.

Newton told MTV News that Ritchie plans on making the movie into a trilogy fast. After Snatch it took Ritchie nearly 5 years to come out with Revolver. However, this time around expect things to go a lot faster.

Newton also said that not all the stars of RocknRolla will be in the sequels. After all, not all of them survive.

RocknRolla stars Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven, and Ludacris.

Hollywood sure does love being original these days. Director Patrick Lussier is set to remake the 1981 horror flick, My Bloody Valentine.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, My Bloody Valentine will star Jaime King of recent Sin City fame. Jaime will play the lead character, Sarah Palmer.

My Bloody Valentine is the story of a woman who married her teenage sweetheart's nemesis. She is reunited with her former love on Valentine's Day. It's a very sweet story.

The remake will come out in January 2009. There will be a simultaneous 3-D release.

David Schwimmer recently took a one and a half year break from acting to get in the director's chair for Run Fatboy Run.

Run Fatboy Run stars Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. Run Fatboy Run is the story of a somewhat overweight man trying to win back his ex-wife he dumped when she was pregnant.

MTV recently had David Schwimmer answer a bunch of fan questions in a two part series. Here's some of the questions and answers from part one.

SARA Asks:
I love Simon Pegg so I'm excited to see him in the lead for this. How did you think of him? Did you ever consider acting in it yourself?

DAVID Says:
I love Simon, too. He's brilliant. We worked together in a few things and have been friends for a while, so he was my first choice. And no, I really didn't think about acting in it â€" I just wanted to focus all my energy on one thing: directing.

ANNA Asks:
What's more challenging: directing or acting? And what's more rewarding of the two?

DAVID Says:
Actually, I have to say I love both equally, and find both of them rewarding. I just finished a movie called "Nothing But the Truth" playing Kate Beckinsale's husband, and had a great time. I kind of needed to get back to acting, after spending a year and a half directing the movie.Continue Reading...

Director Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are about to make a movie called The Dweller.

The person most excited about this should be AFI grad, Brad Ingelsby. He was previously living with hie parents working at his father's insurance company. According to Variety, Ingelsby got his script sold to Relativity Media for $650,000.

The Low Dweller is about Slim (DiCaprio), a man recently released from prison for murder. His only plan upon released was to marry his girlfriend until he found out his brother was murdered. Now his plan is revenge.

The script is said to be reminiscent of No Country for Old Man. That could explain why the studio was so eager to bid on this first time writer's script.