August 2008 News Archive (Page 14)

We'd like to wish a happy birthday to Edward Norton. The actor turns 39 today.

Norton most recently starred in The Incredible Hulk, a comic book movie that was overshadowed this summer by other successes in that genre, most notably Iron Man and The Dark Knight. The film was also marred by a conflict between Norton and the studio, as the star refused to publicize the flick before its release date.

Despite the disappointing experience and box office take of The Incredible Hulk, Norton is one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Primal Fear and starred alongside Brad Pitt in the cult classic, Fight Club.

It had to happen some weekend.

The Dark Knight was finally overtaken at the box office this weekend, as Ben Stiller's comedy Tropic Thunder made an estimated $26 million, dropping Batman and company to second place.

Here's a look at the top five from the weekend:

1. Tropic Thunder: $26 million
2. The Dark Knight: $16.7 million
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: $15.5 million
4. Mirrors: $11.1 million
5. Pineapple Express: $10 million

Batman went down in flames to Jack Black and company this weekend.

Here's a movie poster for Burn After Reading, one of the most anticipated films from the fall of 2008.

It's directed by the Coen Brothers and is their follow-up to the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. The flick also stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney. In other words:

We'll see you at the theater on September 12, right?

How many comic book movies are bold enough to show a rape scene?

None, so far. But that will change when Watchment comes out in the spring of 2009. The film will keep a violent scene of sexual assault from the comic intact, co-star Carla Gugino - who played Sally Jupiter in the film - told MTV News.

“It was really brutal. It was brutal to shoot,” Gugino said of the scene, in which The Comedian (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) attacks an young Sally, who only manages to avoid getting raped by the timely intervention of fellow mask Hooded Justice.

Sally Jupiter is confroned by The Comedian in Watchmen.

“That was one of the things [director] Zack [Snyder] said to me from the start: ‘I really want this to be incredibly brutal. It’s not a turn-on kind of story. It’s bad," Gugina said. "It’s important that we did that. I think hopefully it will be really powerful.”

As Watchmen prides itself on, this is certainly another example of it being anything but an ordinary comic book movie.

As reported earlier this week, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - originally meant to be released in mid-November - is set to hit theaters in the summer of 2009.

Considering the new competition the film will now face, including the Transformers sequel, experts are confounded by the decision.

Warners Bros.' decision to change the release date was “a very curious move,” Jeff Bock of industry research firm Exhibitor Relations told MTV, especially considering how few family-friendly films will be released this fall.

Bock predicted a total box office haul of over $300 million for Harry Potter if it had remained in the fall. Now? Those projections could drop because the July release date places Harry in competition with summer blockbusters such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

So, what movie benefits the most from the Harry Potter change of dates? That's easy: Twilight.

“There’s no way that Harry Potter was worried about Twilight, but Twilight has got to be feeling very good right now,” Bock said, projecting that the vampire movie could do somewhere around $70-100 million. “Maybe it won’t be as big as Harry Potter, but if a company like Summit Entertainment pulls off $100 million, that’s quite a coup. Things are looking really bright for Twilight right now.”

After a quiet few weeks of movie openings, four major films open across the country this weekend. Will any of them overtake The Dark Knight at the box office?

Read on for our answer...

Tropic Thunder
Stars: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr.
Quick synopsis: A satire of Hollywood, a handful of actors think they are filming a movie - but are actually involved in a war.
Prediction: We're saying it: will climb over Batman and be number-one at the box office.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Stars: Cartoons
Quick synopsis: The Grand Army of the Republic fights the New Droid Army of the Separatists.
Prediction: Only the most hardcore Star Wars fans will turn out for this animated features.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Stars: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson
Quick synopsis: Sexy stars meet and have romantic fun in Barcelona.
Prediction: Aimed an older audience, will make the top five at the box office.

Mirrors
Stars: Kiefer Sutherland
Quick synopsis: Evil mirrors threaten a family.
Prediction: Scarier than mirrors? How badly this film does at the box office.

We're gonna go out on a limb and say Mirrors won't be the film to knock The Dark Knight off of its perch atop the box office. But this horror film could still be worth a viewing.

Let's see if a handful of movie critics from around the country agree...

- While watching it won't necessarily lead to seven years of bad luck, it does make for a fairly aggravating 110 minutes... -- eFilmcritic

- It skirts along the edge of greatness, but for every one thing it does right, it does another so inconceivably wrong... -- Dread Central

- Mirrors isn't a total wash of a horror film, but it is not unreasonable to expect more from a filmmaker who has delivered stronger, more confident works in the past... -- The Movie Boy

- It's not much of a compliment to call Mirrors "considerably better than Shutter, Pulse, or One Missed Call," but the flick is just good enough to make one wish it had shown up before those turkeys... -- FEARnet

Considering the success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - super hero movies grounded in reality - you can't blame writers for trying emulate this formula.

But is it really possible for a film about He-Man?!?

Screenwriter Justin Marks, who is penning a movie about that cartoon reportedly called Grayskull, seems to think so. This is what he told MTV about his vision:

“The script is very true to the characters — we’re not talking about putting nipples on the Trapjaw suit. But we had to come up with a reason again why Trapjaw would actually not just be something that’s totally absurd, but why he would need those bionic parts added to him. Which gives a sort of sense of where [the movie] is going in some way.”

Given such a realistic base, Marks said he has more latitude in creating He-Man’s world of Eternia, adding he's free to create an epic universe unlike “anything we’ve ever seen before on a visual level.”

By the power of Grayskull, how do you make He-Man a relatable super hero?

With a new version of 90210 airing on The CW this fall, perhaps Brian Austin Green - who played David Silver on the original Beverly Hills, 90210 - thinks there's a huge, mainstream push for stars of the show to receive extra attention these days.

What else could make the relatively unknown actor mention himself as a candidate for the next Batman villain.

"I would love to be the Riddler," Green said to MTV. He further explained "I hope to God that they don't try to replace Heath and have the Joker. And Two-Face is gone. So they need a new villain, and the Riddler makes sense."

It does. But so does the idea of Johnny Depp taking on the role.

Green sounded serious about his desire to play the part, however. He explained that he'd need a lot of time to prepare for it.

"That would take years of preparation. It's tough. Heath set the bar at a new level, which I think is fantastic for comic book lovers and movie lovers. He changed the face of what people expect out of those films. If you watch the old ones, I mean, they were great for what they were, having Danny Elfman's music, but this is a new level."

What do you think? Does Brian Austin Green stand any chance at portraying The Riddler? Dude is dating Megan Fox.

So he must have something going for him.

Forget The Dark Knight.

With Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder on his resume, this is the summer of Danny McBride.

"He's the guy everyone will be talking about. That guy is unstoppable," comedian Bill Hader, one of McBride's co-stars in Tropic Thunder, told USA Today.

How does McBride feel about all the attention?

"I guess it's my big summer. I don't know. I feel like I've had more eventful ones when I was a kid," he joked. "When we went to Nags Head or something."

On a serious - but still funny - note, McBride owes all his recent screen time to The Foot Fist Way, a film he co-wrote with two film-school friends and made for about $80,000. They took it all the way to Sundance.

These days, the rising star just wrapped Land of the Lost, opposite Ferrell. Next up? Writing and shooting the HBO series East Bound and Down, about a burned-out baseball player.

"I've been writing around the clock," McBride said. "I do the same things I've always done — watch movies and play video games and just do nothing, talk about ideas and write. Kind of boring."